Birthday photo by Kathy:

(New hammock. Can you find Stout?)

Kathy missed her breakfast in bed routine last year because of a soccer tournament, so she was particularly looking forward to the special treatment this year. The two girls took care of writing up a menu and shuttling up Kathy’s requests. Clyde and Stout brought her the paper. She received many flowers, both for inside and out.

Spring Hill got out in time for Mother’s day, so Danny was in, and Nicole drove in to celebrate the day. After church, I took advantage of having us all together and dressed up for a backyard photo session.

Kathy got a lot of flowers as gifts for both inside and outside of the house. But the heaviest gift she got was the river-rock path that Danny and I made for her garden. This is another project that Bob would be proud of. We dug out the path, put in a 4″ plastic edge, tamped the dirt, laid down weed cloth, then poured in about 600 pounds of river rock. The ends of the path are capped with some abandoned rocks we found in the Holly Lake woods. I’d like to put some larger stepping stones along the middle.

She is quite happy with her new path. (View from bedroom window.)

We’ve had an interesting week at Dauphin Island, and overall an enjoyable spring break. The week started off unseasonably warm but finished off unseasonably cold. So basically it has been unseasonable.

There was not much internet access, except what we could glimpse via a BlackBerry. (Limited.) But then I discovered on our last full day here that if I put the Mac laptop on a chair in a certain part of the house, we can, indeed, get internet access. It is probably just as well I did not discover this earlier.

Danny has been able to visit twice and is spending the night with us tonight and will join us for Easter mass. He had to squeeze us in between several travel baseball games and a tournament. We drove up today to watch the last game of the week. The Badgers almost came from behind, but lost 5 to 3. Danny closed last night’s 9th inning and kept the opposing team from scoring. One strike out, one pop up, and one runner thrown out. Good showing. Coach was impressed.

Highlights from the week:

Van got stuck in sandy driveway the evening we arrived:

Claire and Kathy throw the football:

Jeb sits on the sidelines…

… and builds stick art:

Kathy and girls adopt a lost dog for a couple of hours. His name turned out to be Calypso:

Jeb and Danny got to play 16 holes of golf at Spring Hill one day. He joined us for dinner and dancing. Here he and Kelly do “The Heisman” dance:

On the way to the Pelican Restaurant, we stopped to watch the sunset:

Other highlights included visiting next door neighbor, Ruth Ann, and her two 12 year-old grand kids to watch the sunset from her widow’s walk. The three girls road 7.5 miles to the fort end of the island and back. Kelly dug the deepest hole I’ve ever seen. Claire’s crab won the chilly hermit crab race. A dog named Kelly joined us for our bayside walk.

Oh… and the Department of Justice ok’d the purchase of the company, creating a stir at work in my absence.

Biggest news is that Jeb’s company is being acquired once the Department of Justice says ok. Good thing Jeb embraces change because there will be some. Jeb’s other big(ger) news is that he will be substituting for Uncle Bill in the B.S.R.C. golf tournament. Dan Sr. has been giving Jeb lessons at the church and driving range. Verdict is still out.

Nicole moved from a shack down by the river to a nice house in Grant’s neighborhood. If Grant yelled “hey Nicole!” off his back deck, she would be able to hear him. Nicole has a new housemate who joined her for Mary Claire’s 12th birthday celebration in Snellville.

Danny is finishing out his sophomore year at Spring Hill and started with the baseball team. Kathy, Jeb, Kelly, Claire, and the two dogs all drove down to watch him pitch in purple.

DC on mound at Febuary 2nd season opener at Spring Hill. Kathy, Kelly, Claire huddled on top of ivy wall. 2/3/07.

Kelly continues her high school athletics running track this spring. (She ran cross country in the fall and lettered as a freshman!) She is doing well in school and in Life Teen at church.

Claire is doing great in middle school. She worked so hard to make straight A’s she was awarded an iPod nano. (Why is middle school so ridiculously hard?) She is playing at the top of her game in soccer. She is also attending The Edge (middle school pre-Life Teen) where Kathy and Jeb are helping lead 300 very loud and energetic middle schoolers. Only 4 more sessions to go… Amen.

We had a fun evening celebrating Claire’s 12th birthday. She wanted to go to Macaroni Grill. Nicole and her new housemate, Kristen, were coming in from Athens. Gramalie and Grandad also joined us. There was a little confusion because Kathy made reservations at the Snellville Macaroni Grill, but I had told everyone to go to the one near Gwinnette Place Mall. “No wonder you were worried about us being late,” she said, when we finally realized the miscommunication.

Dinner was good and a lot of fun. We covered the table with drawings. Nicole and Kristen headed back to Athens, and the rest of us headed to “The Singing Bean” in Lawrenceville, a karaoke coffee house in Lawrenceville. It is a very strange but Kathy and the girls think it is a lot of fun. Gramalie says she enjoyed it, although she had a look of concern on her face. Grandad and I sat outside of the karioke room most of the time, sipping our decaf coffee, but we enjoyed the odd experience, and we certainly enjoyed helping celebrate Claire’s birthday.

Happy Birthday Claire!

After going shopping for our 20th wedding anniversary, which meant some special gifts, the following message was waiting on our answering machine. Good thing I was able to intercept and delete it before Kathy could hear it.

Discover-Card-Security-Anniversary-2007.mp3

Unfortunately I had to be out of town on our anniversary, so I carefully hid four gifts in and around the house. As each girl got up, they handed an envelope to Kathy who went on a treasure hunt using clues. (Taking advantage of different start and stop times for middle school and high school.) It worked out great, because she was surprised to get the first one, and then surprised to get the second one, and then had no idea that as each girl came home from school, they would hand her another envelope each. And of course each present she found was… well… more reason for a security phone call than the one prior.

Kathy probably will never mind me leaving for our anniversary again.

Between church and dinner, we took advantage of being dressed up and snapped a family photo. Dogs included. This one came out pretty well. Only one of the 8 of us had to be brought in digitally. Can you tell which one?

The recording: Listen

The transcript:

6/7/2006

D = 18, K = 13

You have two old messages.

Old message.

One. Wednesday. 5:50 pm.

K: Can you tell mom to come pick me up?

D: No.

K: Why?

D: You can just walk home. Bye.

K: What?

D: You can just walk home.

K: But we don’t have the key.

D: To what?

K: Mom took the key with her so we can’t get out.

D: Well just… well does someone else have the… well tell the lifeguard you want to get out then just walk home.

K: Why can’t mom take me home?

D: She’s painting.

K: What?

D: She’s painting.

K: Ugh…. bye.

D: Bye

(pause)

K: I’m not coming home.

D: What?

(click)

Saved this voicemail since July 12 2005. It was not my “big five oh” as the singer suggests. We would all head down to the beach for vacation the following week.

Listen

Last night we were watching “America’s Got Talent”. Kelly was amazed when she found out that Regis was in his 70’s. “He looks young for being in is 70’s,” Kelly said. “He’s like Grandaddy. Grandaddy and Regis both look young.”

One odd thing about the Mac5 blogs is that the moments of crisis we’ve experienced around Grandaddy’s misadventures at the hospital this year are really not recorded here. Kelly’s comment is especically appreciated on this side of Dad’s third hospital event.