A Weekend To Remember

We got back Sunday afternoon from a Girl Scout camping trip in the mountains. Eleven girls and seven parents. We always have a high girls/parents ratio in our troop. It's a fun thing to watch the girls grow and learn and gain confidence.

We drove up Friday afternoon to a lovely campsite not too far from the lake but not within sight of it. I guess you could call the campground "partially improved" because although it had paved roads, a shower house and flush toilets, there wasn't a speck of grass anywhere within the group campsite area. There was bunch grass elsewhere, but the ground at our site had nothing but dirt, pumice, and lodgepole pine cones.

And mosquitoes. We can't forget the mosquitoes. They were large and plentiful. As they say, there wasn't a single mosquito there - they were all married with several hundred children. One dad told the girls that they were hired by Red Cross for a blood drive. And you had to be ready when you unzipped your tent because they just might shove you aside and enter first. We had repellent but the only one that stood a ghost of a chance against the thirsty little buggers was the one with 98% DEET content. Yes, I know DEET isn't all that good for you, but neither is slapping yourself black and blue and scratching until you have skin under your nails. Two girls got together and counted bites and came up with about one hundred each. Note to self: Do not, under any circumstances, camp at a high mountain lake in June when there's been a long spring.


One parent was coming late Friday night so we made up a scavenger hunt for the girls and then told "Your Most Embarrassing Moment" stories around the campfire while we waited. One girl told a story on her sister and was giggling so hard we had to have her repeat some of it. I don't usually remember embarrassing moments but I did tell of when I was a Senior in High School doing work study at the local clinic and managed to pass out when I was supposed to be assisting at a mole removal. At least I didn't wet my pants when I keeled over like a felled oak.

Late Saturday morning, the girls got into an all-out water fight using water bottles with wide necks, three-gallon buckets, and plastic dishpans. It started when one girl threw water on one of the dads and it quickly escalated. One table was the "dry" zone and the adults sat there watching and cheering. The water was ice-cold coming out of the faucet so there were a lot of shocked expressions and rigid postures.

We have a couple of girls who have a problem staying hydrated so I came up with a deal that each time they finished the 1/2 liter water bottle that the troop provided, they could get a small piece of candy, also provided by the troop. I got the (large) bag of candy out and transfered them to a zippy bag while one by one the girls gathered around me. I felt like Santa Claus. One girl's parents also brought her little four-year-old brother. He found out what the candy was for and promptly left with his water bottle. A minute later, I happened to look up and watched as he poured the water out behind a tent. Smart little guy. I told him I saw him pouring it out and that he had to fill it up and drink it to get a candy. So he filled the bottle and then stood right in front of my chair. Remember I mentioned the water was ice-cold. He'd gulp four or five times, his hand coming up to his throat and his feet beginning to dance. Then he'd stop drinking, clutch his throat and dance around for a few seconds making gargling noises. Finally, he'd come to a stand-still, burp, and eye the bag of candy. A second later, up went the bottle for the next round of gulping.

The girls took turns that afternoon going out on the motor boat to earn a badge and they came back into camp that evening tired and happy. They weren't so happy a few hours later when a thunderstorm took two hours to travel east to west almost right overhead. Three of the girls were downright scared out of their wits. We all sat under the awning of the trailer and I sat next to the frightened girls, talking to them and giving encouragement and started the other girls singing. Between "Pink Pajamas", "The Quartermaster's Store" and doughnuts being fried inside the trailer and passed around, all three of the girls pulled themselves together. We were lucky that the storm started at 8:15 and only lasted two hours. I'm not sure I want to imagine what would have happened if it started after the girls had gotten to sleep!

I have no pictures because Mike took both the still and movie cameras with him to Christmas Valley. He went with Nick and Cameron, his dad, and two of his brothers to scout out their hunting prospects for their October hunting trip.

I love camping out. I love watching kids learn new skills. I love watching them build on what they learned last time camping. I could have done without the mosquitoes and thunderstorm but even those were very good learning opportunities.

Traffic court

traffic court \traf-ik cōrt\ n : That which inspires us to more closely follow the driving laws.

I had neglected to renew the tags on our Explorer and this was pointed out to me by a nice man dressed in a handsome uniform driving a car with pretty red and blue lights mounted on top.

I would like to point out right here and now that procrastination runs freely in my veins. Those tags were almost a year past expiration. My defense, which the judge thought was worth about two cents, was that at the time the renewal came up the truck's drive line was in pieces on the ground and there was some serious question if it was going to be put back together. When I was finally able to drive it about five months later, the minor detail of expired plates was far from my mind. It did occur to me a few times since then but usually at about 10pm or when I was in town for an evening meeting of one sort or another.

I thought the fine was pretty steep at $97 but after listening to the citations and fines levied on defendants A - L, I was quite happy that $97 was all I was fined. The judge reduced it to $73 which I cheerfully paid.

Some of those citations.......! Driving while suspended......driving without insurance.......no proof of insurance.......failure to obey traffic device......speeding...... Did you know that in the state of Oregon, driving without your license is a criminal offense?? The officer can cuff you and take you in! It makes no difference that you HAVE a license, you have to have it WITH you. I don't know what the fine is because the officer didn't cite the chap with it, only driving without insurance and for whatever he was pulled over for....I think illegal operation of a vehicle. He plead not guilty so the illegal operation wasn't discussed.

Don't EVER get your license suspended and if you do, NEVER, EVER drive. It's too costly besides going on your record. Nearly $400 for the fine plus about $200 for driving without insurance plus whatever it cost to get the car out of impoundment - between $300 and $600. As the judge pointed out, if your license is suspended, your insurance company automatically cancels you and if you're caught driving, the car gets impounded so the three all go together. Ouch!

I now have no desire to speed or try to beat the red light, nor will I wait until the last minute to renew either tags or driver's license.

Scouts

Another weekend spent with scouts, this time working to get the resident camp set up for the summer. Each June, there is a work party that hangs the canvas tents on the tent frames, spreads the mats out and puts the docks in the water at the waterfront, hacks back the vigorous growth encroaching on the many trails, and spreads bark, gravel, or sand wherever it's needed.

There are additional projects also going on. Last year I helped Mike build a three-stall changing room at the waterfront and the year before that, I helped a crew cut boards to length to replace about ten tent platforms. This year, the extra projects were splitting up about five years' worth of firewood in the form of trees that came down last winter (those trees had a diameter of 3 -4 feet), and placing a number of benches along the main trail all the way to the end of the peninsula (about 1/2 mile).

So which did I do? Neither. Mike did some finish work on the changing room and I helped "make" feathers. The feathers are a special award made of a turkey feather dyed to look like an eagle feather. They had to have a leather loop, some colored fluffy feathers, and red felt attached to the quill end. The trick was wrapping the leather loop in such a way that is doesn't slide off. Another woman and I worked on that.

And in spite of my lack of physical exertion, I was pretty tired Saturday night. Maybe that was because one of the six women in our cabin did as fine a job of snoring Friday night as I've heard in a long time. I thought I had successfully ignored it but I guess not. One poor woman took her sleeping bag and finished the night in her truck. I can peel the shingles from the roof myself but I've figured out a way that I don't snore while camping. I still breathe pretty heavily, I'm told, but I don't snore.

Sokki the Hamster

Now that the danger of Sokki's imminent death seems to be in the past, I'll post an update.

It really started when Richelle got him. We got back into the car and she wanted Sokki to go into the run-about ball she'd brought with her instead of traveling home in a little cardboard box. That way she could hold him in her lap and watch him. I didn't really want her to make the transfer because I knew he'd probably bite and when he did, I figured she'd let go of him. The car has far to many small places where a baby hamster can hide so I made the transfer. He clawed, bit, squealed, and wet all over my hand but I got him in the ball. I also managed to injure one little finger which is probably why he clawed, bit, squealed, and wet all over my hand.

Sokki's habitat. The look-out tower is his favorite place and is where he eats, sleeps, and ...um... smells up the place.

Okay, so now he's leary of me. I try to tame him by holding him for a few seconds at a time when he's still in the cage but he clearly doesn't like it. About a week ago, I picked him up again and he squealed and kept squealing. Then he went stiff - still squealing. I opened my hand to let him scamper off and he didn't move. I tilted my hand to encourage him and he rolled off my hand stiff as a board onto his back still squealing. I thought he was having a heart attack and seizure simultaneously. The thought screaming through my head was that I'd killed my daughter's hamster right in front of her. Suddenly, he stopped squealing, flipped himself over and scurried up a tube to safety. WHEW!


Stashing his food. He crams most of his food into his cheek pouches and hides it. At first, it was right here but now it's up in his look-out tower.


At about this point in time, I purchased a natural product that neutralizes the hamster smell in his body and makes him and his output production much less odorous. It works quite well but the little rodent had to get used to the altered taste of his water. He basically didn't drink for almost two days and I was getting very worried. He wasn't running around all that much and was sleeping quite a bit. I kept thinking sentences with no endings. "If that hamster dies...." "If he doesn't start drinking water...." "If I've killed Sokki....." "I wonder if I could...."

Finally, one night I just couldn't sleep very well. I kept dreaming of the little guy and the dreams ran the gamut of nothing wrong with him at all to dying in convulsions on the cage floor. I kept getting up and checking on him. At about 2am, I finally started reading Richelle's hamster book in the "Diseases" section. I knew that hamsters prefer a temp range from 65 - 80 but the book gave me the impression that the little buggers like it more constant with a variance of about three degrees either way. The bedroom was hovering around 66 at night and getting up to about 75 during the day so I hauled in the space heater and flipped it on low.

It worked!! When I checked on him around 6am, he was drinking water as if he.....well.....hadn't had any for a couple of days. Later, I heard him running in the wheel. He improved rapidly and in just a couple of days was pretty much back to normal and growing.

You can bet your last dollar that I haven't tried to pick him up since! He is taming down, though, getting used to our voices and we talk to him a lot. He sniffs at my hand instead of pinning back his ears and getting defensive.

The things Moms do for their kids.....

Let me tell you about the past 36 hours or so.

(At this point, Himself would moan, "And if I don't want to hear about it?"
To which I'd respond, "Listen anyway." In kind, loving tones, of course.)


Let's rewind back to early Tuesday morning.

3am ~ My alarm goes off. I hit it and it shuts off. It's somehow therapeutic to have an alarm clock that turns off by slamming.....um.....pushing a large button on the top. I stagger out of bed and check to make sure Cameron's awake and up. I hear the shower running. Good. He's up. I go back to bed.

3:10am ~ I think I hear a loud whisper. I look to the doorway of my bedroom. No blurry shape blocking out the dim light from the kitchen. However, being a mom, I get up again to see if I was hearing things or if Cameron really did need to talk to me.

He really did need to talk to me. As in, "Mom, I feel like I'm going to puke." Now my children don't come to me with that statement after about age twelve and he's eighteen. His problem was that he had to go to work. I mean he HAD to go. He's in his first-30-days-probation period and if he calls in sick, he kisses his job goodbye. He knew this and I knew this. He was asking for help in making his guts settle down. I made him sip peppermint tea and nibble saltines for about thirty minutes and then sent him to work with the tea and crackers, and with crossed fingers I went back to bed. It's 3:45am.

5am~ Mike's alarm goes off. His has a little push-button on the front and it's on the other side of the bed, anyway. I haven't done much for the past 75 minutes except doze and wait for a phone call.

5:30 ~ Mike leaves for work. I go back to sleep.

5:45 ~ I wake up feeling as if I've slept well for at least half an hour. I check the clock and give up on sleep. I get up and start to put together the last-minute stuff Richelle's asked me to take care of for her Girl Scout event she's putting on.

7am ~ I wake up Richelle and we run around like the proverbial chicken, getting showered and dressed, getting everything checked off and loaded up. We leave for town at 8am. (Breakfast? What's that?")

8:30 ~ My cell rings. It's Cameron. "Mom, I need you here."
"There? At the mill?"
"Yes. Here. Now."
"Why?"
"They found me in the bathroom throwing up during break and they're sending me home. They don't want me to drive myself."
I knew the policy had changed over the years with the company in regards to vomitus. Back in the dark ages twenty years ago, Mike would go to work with the flu. When I asked, he said that if he needed to throw up, he'd just head for the outside door and puke around the corner. The only time he'd stay home with the flu is if he had the trots. Can't very well head for the outside door with that condition.
Cameron wasn't being sent home because he was caught throwing up during break, he was being sent home because he was throwing up. Them sending him home is a different color of fish than him calling in sick. Newer policy having to do with bodily fluids. But to be told that they didn't want him driving himself home? Wow. He must have been white as a sheet. His boss offered to drive him home. The poor guy didn't know how long a drive that was. Cameron turned him down.
I, however, was between that well-known rock and the unyielding hard place. The rock was that I HAD to be with Richelle all day as her adviser and to meet the adult/youth ratio. The hard place was that my son was sick and needed me. Fortunately, his best friend's mom was willing to make a round trip of about 100 miles to get him and take him home. Lovely lady. I am deeply in her debt.

9am ~ The girls helping Richelle with her project begin to arrive. I'm going to skip the next six hours except for one darling funny story and a brief description of her project. Richelle is earning her Bronze award, the highest award available at her level of Girl Scouts (henceforth abbreviated as GS). Along with other requirements, she needed to think up, plan, and execute a community service. At this level, the service can be within GS. She chose to plan and carry out a Daisy (kindergarten level) bridging workshop - a program where the girls complete the requirements to earn a special badge worn on their Brownie uniforms (next level up). She also planned a ceremony for the girls to "bridge" from Daisies to Brownies. She has put in a total of 36.5 hours so far, six of which was the event itself, and not counting the follow-up paperwork.
The funny story: The girls were eating lunch and there were three little Daisies sitting across from me. The one in the middle had a little container of potato chips that got knocked off the table, spilling the chips onto the ground. She picked them all up, sat back down, and with the chips cupped in her hands stated, "Now I can't eat them." I don't think she was complaining, she was simply stating a fact and was uncertain what to do next. One sweet, helpful little Daisy next to her snatched a chip, blew furiously all over one side of it and then the other, handed it back and confidently announced, "Now you can eat it!"
I successfully swallowed my hysterical laughter.

5:15pm ~ We headed home after a brief stop at the grocery store where Richelle actually rode in the cart for a while she was that tired.

Sometime before 7pm ~ Discussion about how Cameron was going to get to work in the morning since his car is still in the parking lot. I offered to drive him but Mike said he could just as easily go to work early and take him. They work in the same mill. We eat supper, Cameron included.

9pm ~ House is quiet as a tomb with a hamster. Mike and Cameron are asleep and have been for almost two hours, Richelle is nearly so, and I'm dragging pretty hard.

3:15am ~ I jolt awake, not having any memory of smacking the alarm silent. I stagger out to the kitchen (deja vu) where Cameron is putting his lunch together. Cameron asks who's driving him. I shuffle back to the bedroom, wake Mike up, and ask him if he's going to be getting up.
"Yeah, but we don't need to leave until quarter after four."
"That'll put him at the mill at five." That's when his shift starts and they're both rabid about getting there half an hour early at least.
Long pause.
"Oh." .....slightly shorter pause.........."You're right." Deep breath and sigh..... "You can go ahead and take him," and Himself shifts to a more comfortable spot in the bed.

3:30am ~ I head out on a 90-minute round-trip drive. The trip down was fun with the chit-chat but the drive back.......do you have any idea of the totally off the wall topics discussed on radio talk shows at 4am? Discussing UFOs and Sasquatch quite matter-of-factly as if they're as real as jumbo jets and bighorn sheep? Cameron said one morning they were having a conversation with Jesus. Odd flock of ducks.

5am ~ I get back home, kiss Himself goodnight and goodbye, climb back into my lightly used side of the bed, fall asleep and don't wake up until 8am.

The rest of the day I have this nagging headache and feeling of lethargy. I manage to get five loads of laundry done, the kitchen cleaned, and the family and dining rooms straightened up but I copped out and picked up pizza for supper on the way home from the Oakland City Council meeting where...

...Cameron was given a commendation for his Eagle project! They are sooo pleased with that sign.

And now I see by the clock that today has become tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

Bits and Pieces

I felt like posting but there's not a whole lot to post about that's all that interesting......

Richelle's hamster is growing almost as we watch him. He drove her out of her bed and to the couch two nights in a row because his wheel was noisy. I put a drop of vegetable oil on the mechanism today and it quieted down considerably. We'll see how she does tonight. I told her it was like having a new baby - they keep you up until you're exhausted and then wake you up in the night. Richelle named him Sokki but Mike insists on calling him Stewart as in Little which annoys her no end. This evening he referred to Sokki as his grandchild (!!!). I never, ever thought he'd enjoy a hamster but he sure seems to.

Cameron's holding up under the strain of ten-hour days of hard labor. He was having a hard time with fatigue and even resorted to caffeine pills a couple of times. I remembered an athletic teacher from high school talking about how he made peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate for energy while cross-country skiing so Wednesday night (yes, night!) I made a search online for Buckeye Ball recipes and made a batch. They didn't look all that pretty because I didn't want to wait until midnight for them to chill hard before I dipped them but Cameron said they were quite tasty and did the trick nicely. He took six to work and ate four of them first break and the other two last break and had no trouble staying alert. I think I'd rather him eat a homemade candy like Buckeye Balls instead of pop a pill containing about 150mg of caffeine.

He's bulking out and I can see a difference just in one week. He's always been a solid boy but he's getting some serious muscles on him now. Look out girls........or maybe I should say, "Look out, Cameron!"

The flowers in the baskets are growing but with the cooler weather we've been having, not that rapidly. We had a decent June day today with clear skies and temps in the mid 80s. Himself has ceased complaining over their slowness and has resigned Himself to wait. I was given a basket of petunias that smell so delicious! I don't have it hanging, yet, but will get to that tomorrow.

We had our Girl Scout Court of Honor last night. We do this twice a year and it's a time where the girls' families come together at a potluck and witness the girls being awarded the badges they've completed, the honors they've earned, and the participation patches for the events they've attended. The parents who've helped in the troop are thanked and are usually given a small gift of appreciation. That's where I got the petunias. I have such a great leader to work with! I headed up the project to nominate our leader for Outstanding Troop Leader award for our area and of course she got it! How could she not with all she does? Fortunately, the awards committee is an intelligent group of women and agreed with us that she is a fine, outstanding troop leader.

Tuesday, Richelle holds the Daisy Bridging Workshop and Ceremony event that she's been working on so hard the last few months. This project completes the requirements for her Bronze Award, the highest award for her level of Girl Scouts. I am looking forward to next Wednesday morning because then the event will be behind us and only paperwork to finish!

The Hamster

Richelle brought home her little hamster today. It was a little traumatic getting it. We went in Saturday to get one only to find that they were sold out. How disheartening! Poor Richelle had to wait until the last errand was run before we went to the pet store to pick one out and, believe me, it was a long wait. We'd left the house at about 11:30am and we didn't get to the pet store until around 5:30pm (since it costs nearly two gallons of gas to get to town and back in the Explorer, I consolidate errands whenever I can). The store was completely sold out. There are two basic kinds of hamsters, normal size and pygmy, and this store also carries long-haired breeds of each but they were out of everything. Not one single hamster. We talked to a sales person who told us she was expecting a fairly large shipment early Monday morning and to come in after school.


Late this morning, Mike had an errand to do in town so we talked him into taking us with him. Richelle was antsy and shot to the back of the store where the small animals are kept (ferrets SMELL!) to be greeted by....................empty cages. Evidently, the shipment wasn't due for a while, maybe a couple of days. Richelle's frustration was evenly divided between the store in general and the sales person from Saturday in particular. They suggested, and we did, leave our name and number with the front desk to call us when they arrived. Mike told Richelle that she looked as if she'd just lost her last friend.

The store called at 2:30pm to tell us the shipment had arrived and the hamsters were ready for sale. There was no question in my mind; this called for a special trip into town. She went, she saw, she's happy. The little rodent's name is Sokki pronounced "Soak-ie". She's had the name for weeks now and is ecstatic to have the animal to go with it.

The first picture is of little Sokki climbing the tube from the living area to the exercise ball. It must have been quite a climb for him because after a couple of runs he fell asleep in the flat part of the tube between bends.

The second picture is of Sokki cleaning himself. Or maybe he's nibbling on something. The blue is the corner of the cage, the clear yellow is the tube leading up to the exercise ball, and the food dish is the green in the right corner. The colorful thing to the left is his little house made from his carry-home box with the flaps cut off and a hole cut for a door. There's a yellow chew-toy inside. She decided that a cardboard box was just fine for his house and she didn't need him to have a fancy-dancy igloo. Besides, that's a $7 savings for her. Good thing, too, if he's going to be sleeping in the tunnel. She's paying for everything at her own insistence and our encouragement. The only thing I bought was a $6 book on the care of hamsters.

Her allowance covers food and bedding but she's wanting to earn extra money to pay for habitat extensions and other fun stuff for little Sokki. So now we have clean windows, my plant leaves are dusted......

First Day of Work

Cameron had his first full day at work at a "real" job. He chose to take the 10 hour day/4 days a week shift. The shift starts at 5am. This means that he needs to plan on getting there by 4:30am because of the length of the commute. It takes 45 minutes to drive there. This morning he needed to be there by 4:30 for last-minute training so he had to leave at 3:30am. GAG! This was hard on me because I was afraid he'd sleep through his alarm. He has a habit of thinking he's awake and he isn't. So I set my alarm for 3am, thinking that if he wasn't up when it went off there's still be time for him to get up and out the door by 3:30. Not to worry. He was up and around by 2:45. I quietly turned off my alarm and when he left, fell back asleep.

It wasn't a very good sleep because I kept waking up with a jolt and had to remember that he'd already left for work in good time. I had programed myself to worry and did a fine job of it all night long. I took a short nap this afternoon and felt guilty because Cameron couldn't.

So you know how your kids come home from some function or overnighter or something and have to share with you every single detail of their time away from you? Cameron didn't even wait to get home. He called on his cell. It was interesting because Mike worked in the green end at the time we were married and for, oh, maybe six years more before he went into management. I was curious about what Cameron would tell me about pulling green chain. One of the first things he complained about was the stench of peeled hemlock. I was transported back in time about twenty years and it was Mike complaining about having to pull hemlock. I guess it's something pretty bad and any slivers you get fester up in a matter of hours.

A quick explanation here for those who aren't familiar with the process of making plywood. The logs are stripped of their bark and sent into a pressurized steam tunnel for an amount of time depending on the type of wood. The purpose of the tunnels is to drive the water into the wood, totally saturating it. The logs then come out of the tunnels and are peeled with a lathe. Just like a wood-shop lathe where the wood spins and you press a knife to it to make the design, the logs spin and are laid against a very long blade (4, 8, or 10 feet long) that has been adjusted for how thick the peel needs to be (measured in millimeters). The log is reduced to a very, very long "ribbon" (called veneer) of very, very thin wood. Here's where the steam is needed. If there isn't much moisture, the wood will break and curl. Soaked with water, it holds together and lays flat. The veneer goes through the clippers and then down a chain where most is removed by machine and some is removed by hand. This is where Cameron is. Yes, it is heavy. In about a week and a half, you'd be silly to challenge him to an arm-wrestling match.

I guess he didn't do too badly and got some encouraging words from his crew. He came home starved and exhausted and ate a large supper, but I couldn't get him to go to bed until about 11:30pm; he was that wound up. He doesn't work until Monday or he'd have gone much earlier. The beauty of working 4/10 is that you get three day weekends.

So endeth his day.

Flowers and baskets

Thought I'd post some pictures of my roses and of the hanging baskets.




This one I picked as a bud and watched it open indoors.



This is the same rose shot with the micro setting. I spritzed it with water and Cameron took the picture.


Cameron took this one too. He went outside in the dark and rain where he used a tripod, the low-light setting, and a mini-mag for lighting. That kid sure has an eye for the artistic. He had a little trouble because of the rain. This is really the only one of about eighteen shots that turned out very well because with the low-light setting, things have to be perfectly still or they'll blur and raindrops hitting a flower cause just enough motion to make things interesting.



And now (drum roll, please) the persecuted hanging baskets.....

Himself wants to yank out the alyssum and put in something that will bush out and droop faster. If I can only keep his impatient fingers away from them another week, he may become grumpily resigned to their rate of growth. I may talk him into inserting flowers into the sides of the basket through the coconut fibers. That'll give him the illusion that the flowers are filling out, anyway.


A picture of our front patio. The full baskets hanging on either side of the windows are my Mom's Day gift from him. THAT is what he wants the new baskets to look like already. Never mind that they were started WEEKS ago!

Sunday

Sunday was a very interesting day. Mike's brother Bob and his wife Jackie just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on the 28th of last month and their daughter put together a small, informal get-together for them. It was to be a surprise, so those that had early service at their churches attended it and came to Bob's house afterwards. Jessica opened the house, decorated, set up the lunch, and everyone gathered in anticipation of Bob and Jackie's arrival from the later service (they almost attended early service causing great anxiety but that's a different story).

We waited and paced........paced and waited........turns out that someone wanted to talk to Bob about the kidney he'd donated in March and then they decided they needed to stop by the store for a few items. As Jessica said, it's hard to call someone and tell them they're holding up the party that they know nothing about!

They finally arrived and were quite surprised. We didn't leap out at them and yell or anything primarily because our cars were parked at the curb. No one wanted to park a block and a half away and walk to the house. So they figured something was up when they saw all our cars and, being the intelligent people they are, figured it was something along the lines of an anniversary party.

Then came the surprise for Mike and I. Everyone else (excluding Bob and Jackie who knew absolutely nothing) knew it was a double celebration in honor of both Bob and Jackie AND of Mike and me! NOW who's surprised?! What a nice bunch of people!

(That's our nephew behind us)

You see, when our anniversary came in November, our kids didn't plan any celebration for us in spite of the pressure applied by Mike's parents. This didn't bother Mike or me at all. I don't know about Mike but if there was some big to-do for us, it would have painfully reminded me of the gap left by the loss of our Melissa. Knowing her love of all things celebratory, she would have had something planned in detail months in advance. So it was a perfect celebration for Mike and I to take a week's quiet, leisurely tour up the Oregon coast. We never thought we'd missed out on anything and the thought never crossed our minds to be envious of Bob and Jackie or to feel sorry for ourselves. What a lovely bunch of people to include us!

(I tried to flip this pic but couldn't figure out how. It was right when I uploaded it.)

I was so oblivious to looks, comments, and whispers that when Lela asked me to help bring in the cake, I trotted along after her. There were two boxes and I STILL didn't pick up on anything. I just thought that they needed two cakes because they were small and there were a couple dozen people. Didn't occur to me that they'd get one bigger cake instead of two smaller ones. I was about to set the box on the counter when I heard Mike behind me say, "Dear, I think we've been Shanghaied." He had to say that a couple times before it sank into my admittedly thick skull just WHY there were two cakes. Some people are so oblivious!

(Richelle showing the aging parents the controls)

Ray and Lela gave each couple a beautiful wood and crystal music box that plays 16 full songs for each of the three settings of "bells", "piano", and "organ" for a total of 48 full songs. We were also given a double picture frame to hold 5x7 "then and now" pictures. And, of course, congratulatory cards. What a sweet bunch of people!


(Is this pretty or what?)

So that was an amazing Sunday afternoon. I left feeling like a queen!