Mama On The Move

Emily’s 23rd birthday has arrived!  Since she’s off in Texas and not here for us to celebrate with her, we have to find ways to make an impact on her far, far away. Last year we sang a song in a Hamilton style.  This year Katie picked another song she knows Emily loves - City Escape -and wrote lyrics to go with it.  Kerry and I found the song to be very fast paced and we despaired of learning it in time (we only had an hour).   After practicing while making dinner and trying about five separate times to record ourselves (at least one of us would flub it somehow).  We usually find the mess ups to be hilarious and try to include a few in the finished project.   We may not be the most talented singers on the planet but we sing with gusto and that's more important!

So....Emily totaled her car. This used to be Ben's car.  His first words were, "What did you do to my CAR!?" Emily was trying to edge forward in order to see if she could pull out. But she edged too far and got hit by another car, which then bounced off her and hit a third car. No one was hurt, but all three drivers were shaken up.  It happened on the campus of Emily's college.  All three drivers were female students.  Emily said they all sat on the grass trying not to cry. A woman who had stopped to see if everyone was okay came up to Emily and said, "I'm going to give you a hug because you need one."  She hugged each girl in turn just to help calm them down. Emily had to go to court because of the accident.  I couldn't go because Katie had class that day so Kerry accompanied Emily to the courthouse for moral support. He spent the last few days before her court date looking up Virginia laws and terrorizing us with everything...

While we were celebrating Katie's birthday at Red Lobster, Emily was bemoaning the fact that she has a mild allergy to crab.  We had tried buying imitation crab several years ago, only to discover that imitation crab still has some real crab in it. "If they can make tofu into turkey and call it tofurkey, what would they call imitation crab," Emily asked, " Too-fab ?" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Katie had her birthday party the Saturday after her actual birthday. With a delicious purple cake no less! Her party was at Joann Fabrics where the girls learned to take strips of scrapbooking paper... And turn them into beautiful shiny beads! I was very impressed.  The beads looked like they were made out of ceramic! The guests had a great time picking out colors to use. They each made enough beads to make a bracelet to take home. And sixteen year old Katie is here!

Kerry was startled to get in his car and find it looking at him (courtesy of Emily). She's been waiting and waiting for a chance to sneak out to his car and do this!

If you're any sort of a Harry Potter fan at all, you know that J.K. Rowling wrote another book which follows Harry and Ginny's son at Hogwarts.  The book was released on Saturday and Barnes & Noble had a big party from 8:00 to midnight to celebrate the release of the book - although it's not actually a book, it's a play script.  It would make a wonderful book - I've already finished it.  It's a slightly more difficult read because it doesn't tell you how anyone speaks or what they are doing.  In a book, you might read something like,  "Hermione snatched the book out of his hands, marched over to the desk and slammed it down, scattering papers and pencils which rolled off the desk and noisily bounced around on the floor.  She glared at the mess and then back at Ron and snapped, 'Thanks!'" In a script, that same bit would look something like this: Hermione:  Thanks! Movements, expressions, inflections, etc are not in a script...

So, it all came down this way: Kerry called me back in March and said, "Don't kill me.  They want me to go to a conference in Hawaii from May 10th to the 12th." "Aw man!  You get to go to Hawaii?  That is so not fair!"  I pulled out my calendar to write down the dates.  It wasn't until I was actually looking at the calendar that it hit me.  "You're going to be in Hawaii on May 11th?  Our 25th anniversary?  Are you kidding me??" Neither of us had even realized it!  We both heard "10th" and "12th" but didn't make the connection of it also including the 11th which is our anniversary.  When Kerry first left for Korea, he had planned to save his R&R to come home for our anniversary.  Then Ben set his wedding date for June and we realized Kerry would have to save his R&R for that.  We would miss spending our anniversary together.   It's definitely not the first time that's happened but we had ...