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Not that it should shock anyone. My only solace is that I’m not the oldest one around here.

That being said, Having a two year old and a four year old under foot certainly makes you feel old and young again at the same time.

We’ve basically been celebrating all weekend, which is fine, as Mary Vic got to run around all weekend singing happy birthday and making birthday cards.

It’s been a good weekend. There has been so much going on, it’s hard to hit all the high points. The pool opened at Polk Place, so we spent several hours over there during the weekend. It was nice to be able to walk down there, but I have to say, it needs a bit more warming before that water is going to be really good. The kids pool was a bit chilly. The Main pool was downright cold. IF you jumped in, and stayed in, you’d be ok. You couldn’t ease in however… You’d never make it all the way. The kids, of course, were completely oblivious to the temperature. We need about a week of 85+ to get it nicer.

Papa has spent the last few months re-working our grill, and that hard work finally came to a close. Wrestling with mail order grill fulfillment has been the order of the day, complete with multiple shipments and broken grids. The supplier obviously isn’t used to drop shipments, as their packaging was completely inadequate for UPS (or Fedex for that matter). If I can’t ship servers that have been packed well without having UPS take pleasure in disassembly via tow motor and other abuses, there is no way the grids were going to make it with a single piece of Bubble wrap.

But it all came together in the end, and we cooked some burgers and hot dogs to start it up with. I managed to sear a temperature probe wire across my index finger and thumb. The wire braid over the sensor wire conducts heats ALL too well. That sucked pretty badly, but it was pretty much alright the next morning. Neither Mary or William would have anything to do with the cooking…. If they weren’t picky over everything right now, I’d take it personally. We did some trimming of the trees and bushes earlier in the day, which also allowed us to find that we have another family at the house…

They are hard to see, but there are a couple of grey little heads right at her feet. I don’t believe that she was overly happy about our discovery of them.

Mary was able to finally get a Rose bush. We waited until it was slightly cooler and less humid to plant it, but it was done. Mary dug some of the hole herself, and replaced almost ALL of the dirt herself. She was VERY proud of her gardening skills, complete with her own wheelbarrow and tools.

Papa picked up some crickets, so we had to find time to go and retrieve the smallest fishes capable of actually bitting the hook. More than a few hits on the lure and hook weren’t large enough to even think about getting the hook in their mouth. Mary and William didn’t care. I think they enjoyed the smallness of the fish, and the ability to torment them while hanging on the hook.

Monday was a bit of a washout in the afternoon, so no pool, but we did have a Birthday party. Mary acted as the officiator of presents, and William acted as the official Cake icing removal expert. Jeff has the pictures from that, so maybe they’ll come later.

The Grandparents looked after Mary and William while Jeff and I went to dinner and a movie (Indy 4). One of the high lights of the meal was the server coming by to check on us after our food was brought out. We went to a place that we had been going to since I moved to Tennessee. They have been revamping their service, definitely trying to push into the ‘upper level’ of service and food. For the most part they succeed, but it doesn’t feel the same for us anymore. The waitress was fresh from training, VERY nice, but unfortunately, we are definitely in the south. I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but in order to place our expectations in line, the phrasing of her inquiry into the preparation of our meal was toward the exemplary. “Is everything with YALL’s dinner excellent?” was the question. The dichotomy of the word choice was wonderful. And while the dinner was good, I can’t say that it was Excellent. It used to be. I want it to be. Heck, I proposed to Jeff in this place. We used to think very highly of it. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s also not as good as we remembered. They want to play in the bigger leagues, but they just aren’t there, and frankly, their metamorphosis hasn’t been the best for them in my opinion. Trying to be everything to everyone rarely works well. We’ll probably try there again in a while…. as I said, it’s not BAD, just expensive and not as good as it used to be. And we’ve got great memories there.

Indy 4 was entertaining. Suspension of Disbelief was a bit harder to come by with this movie as opposed to Raiders or Indy 3, but it was eventually fun enough that you stopped thinking about how insanely bad the realism isn’t.

Of course, one of the best gifts I could have had for my Birthday was William’s followup examination from his femur break and subsequent Spica cast. He did super well in the Xray room (for the FIRST time), and the Xray’s came out wonderfully. You can barely tell where the break occurred now on either angle, and he’s set for a followup in Six months. Unless something really drastic happens, we won’t even need to xray then. Dr. Martus was pleased with his recovery. Seeing that nearly clean Xray, especially in comparison to the previously broken shots was a wonderful gift. It’s amazing how well the body heals at this age. Dr. Martus told us in the beginning that they don’t try to match the ends of a break together, but just get them in the general area and pointing in the same direction. It’s strange to hear when they tell you that, but it does look like it’s true. He says that there isn’t much point in a followup xray after this, as it will look identical to the other bone.

Of course, that has to be peppered with a little additional ‘lookout’. Because the bone is going to heal faster and grow to match the other, it’s possible that the accelerated growth will cause the OTHER leg to be a little shorter. Of course, it’s also likely that over the next 20 years the two bones will leapfrog each other, eventually closing the gap to nothing, or effectively nothing.

Whew. That’s enough for now.

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