Family

Kinda Hoping December Would Be Better

November wasn’t really a banner month around here, early on it was big ways as we lost a member of the family and 10 days later a good friend. More recently in little ways. Last Wednesday while washing clothes in preparation for the trip to Hendersonville, I noticed a big wet spot underneath the water heater that resides in the laundry room. Sunday afternoon the monitor on the PC started to flicker blue tinting in the lower left corner that grew to encompass 75% of the screen. We caught an Early Cyber Monday Sale and picked up a 23.6″ Samsung monitor for $120, but nobody had any Black Friday deals on water heaters though.

While December has got to be better, but it got off to an inauspicious start. Tonight while chewing a hamburger I bit on something hard, thought at first it might have been a bit of bone, but upon further review it turned out to be a piece of the lower right mandibular second molar. For the past few months I had an occasional pain on the right side when chewing, but never could pinpoint whether it was upper or lower and it was never regular enough to worry about. On the bright side, I don’t have to worry about how to use up that last $500 we had in flex spending anymore.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1434

A Christmas Wonderland

Christmas Lights

My brother Paul is down in Hendersonville, NC visiting with my sister and her husband for a week. Since we didn’t have any vacation left the only time we could visit was this weekend, so we drove up last night and spent the day with them. Unfortunately it has been kind of a messy rainy day, but it didn’t prevent us from our usual downtown Hendersonville shopping stroll.

After dark we drove a few miles up the road from the SMH to the same place we went the last time we were here, the Western NC Agriculture Center near the Asheville Airport. In September it was NC Mountain State Fair, but this time it was a Christmas Wonderland. Twenty bucks a carload for 20 minutes of driving around a giant circuit filled with pulsating lights while “synchronized” is piped into your car’s radio.

Would have been awesome in the Miata, but the Emperor was back in his Throne Room in Aiken and it was steadily raining with intermittent bursts of heavy stuff.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1282

Now For Something Completely Diiferent

Fun eh

One of the Donna’s Canadian Cousins is in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Pipe Band which marched in this year’s New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It snowed.

Parade was not too long, only took 75 min to complete, it was the 3 hrs standing around in the holding area before marching off that was tough. But managed to make it. It’s been a long time since I last marched in a snowstorm.

Cousin John is a big guy and because of that he is in the back row, smack in the middle of the band’s official trip photo (Caution! 1.5M in size) taken in front of the UN after they had given a concert there.

Happy Canada Day

-Sunday July 1st Morning-
Sunday dawned overcast and misty. While we waited on the house full of people (4 Canadian adult cousins, 2 Canadian kid cousins, 4 American adults and 2.5 American kids) to all get up, get some breakfast and chill until we could head down to the local park for the Canada Day festivities, Donna and I decided to go for a walk and get our first international cache. As soon as we mentioned the word walk, there came a series of small voices, “Me too”, “Me too”, “Me too” & “Me too.” James and Mady and their 2 cousins, Laura and Anna, were coming with us.

We headed uphill first, so that the way back would be all downhill. There were about 5 caches within a mile of the house, but mostly the kids were more interested in being kids, so we headed for a park where they could blow off steam. Donna and I pushed swings, spun merry-go-rounds, teetered totters and made sure no one wondered off. Finally the rain and wet pants convinced the kids to head back home, but we walked right past it. There was another small park in sight just down and across the street from the house. More playing and whatnot ensued.

We didn’t mind this detour at all because this park also held a geocache. I headed off, GPSr in hand to look for it with James and Laura. Laura spotted the camoed lock-n-lock first behind a fence post. Laura grabbed a hockey trading card and James took nothing. We had accidentally left behind at home all the SC State Park schwag we had collected to drop in the caches out west, so I dropped in a couple of American quarters for trade. And as I was explaining the whole trading thing, take something, leave something, she put the card back and picked up the 2 quarters. Oh, well, they’ll catch on later.

In the photo above, from left to right: James, Laura, Morris the Moose (the RCMP mascot), Anna, Morris’ handler(who makes sure he just eats bear kibble, not little kids), Maddy and lastly, some random passerby.

He Who Hesitates Is Searched

-Saturday June 30th Afternoon-
After we picked up our rental car we drove over to Mukilteo to watch the Yellow Belted nephew James take his weekly Taekwondo lesson. We of course reacquaint ourselves with his little sister Maddy and acquaint ourselves with his newest and littlest sister Susan*.

*I looked through all my photos and I don’t have a single photo of 8 week old Susan. Probably because she spent 90% of the time inside her papoose being toted around and the other 10% she was either feeding (no cameras allowed) or getting her diaper changed (no cameras desired.)

After Taekwondo we all piled into cars for the drive up to Canada to visit cousins. James wanted to ride with Donna and I, so we moved his booster seat into the Gray Whale and the two nieces rode with their parents. Scott and Beth gave us James’ birth certificate for his ID and they said they would go through Canadian Customs first and tell the officer that we had permission to drive James across the border.

As we got to the border there was a few minute wait and when the Morrisons in front of us went through they headed to the left, not to the right which is the road into Canada proper. We we cleared by the same officer and told to go to the right and we could pull over and wait at the visitor center or continue on because our travel companions were selected for searching.

No reason was given for their selection, so it was entirely random or it might have been that when the CBSA Officer asked Scott if they were any weapons in the vehicle, he went, “…Aaah…I don’t think so…”

Miss Me? I Didn’t Miss You…

We went out west on vacation. I had good intentions of posting a photo a day and maybe even telling some quick story of something that happened as well, but it seemed like once we off a plane in Seattle we didn’t have time to relax until we got back on a plane to come home again.

The sun comes up an hour earlier out there and sets over an hour later, so that, along with the mild temperatures, meant we used up every bit of day doing stuff, only stopping to eat and sleep. On our 7 day trip we used four for visiting 2 different wings of Donna’s family in two different countries, 3 for jamming in some touristy stuff of our own and 2 days for travel (I know that’s more than 7, but I rounded up.) For the first time in any of our numerous visits to the Pacific northwest we actually had a couple days (once again rounding up) of weather that is most associated with that reason, a light rain/mist.

Over the next week I’ll try and pretend that each day is a day from the vacation and do that thing I thought I’d do while I was on vacation.

The above is a Miata of multi-colors spotted while walking off the ferry on Whidbey Island.

Covey of Cousins

You met my cousin Louise, the woman on the left, back in January when she passed through South Carolina on her way to Florida. The woman on the right is Martha, AKA Muffy, the other half of my known universe of first cousins.

Muffy is down in Florida visiting her sister, so we all met at Donna’s sister’s house. Friday evening we got together for dinner and drinks and then again on Saturday for more food and story telling. Both of my cousins are a few year older than I, so it was interesting to get their perspective of my parents from their visiting them before I was old enough to actually form memories.

To add interest to my miniature family gathering, there were Canadian cousins from Donna’s side passing through for lunch and a visit today between their cruise return and Mouse World. Two of them, John & Margret, we had met before, last September at the Gatlingburg Gathering. With them were their two kids, their respective significant others, plus two point five grand kids.