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| Back home!! |
Wow, sorry to be so long in writing but it’s hard to write
from the road. What a great trip we had, though! It was so great to see all of my relatives
after so many years. We even had a great
time on the stops in between. It’s a
shame we don’t fly because it took us eight days of traveling for the two days
of visiting we ended up having in Alabama .
We spent the first night somewhere in Kansas , after driving a total of 15 hours
because we wanted to get to our friends, the Weirs, at a decent hour the next
day so we could spend some quality time with them. We ended up getting to Paula and Denny’s in Piedmont around noon on Thursday and he took us to the
coolest place for lunch! It was actually a big gas station outside Oklahoma City but it was
also a great place to sleep and they had every kind of “old” soda pop you could
ever remember. It was called “Pops”. I got to have my first taste in a long time
of fried okra there and it was wonderful!
We then followed Denny back to their house and took a dip in
his wonderful pool because it was already 95 degrees and really humid! Rob had also brought him two cases of Coors
Light because Oklahoma
only sells 3.2 beer. So, of course, the
guys had to pop a few beers that evening.
The next morning, we took off for Huntville, leaving at 5 am after they
fed us a real nice breakfast.
We finally got to Huntsville
about 5:30 p.m. on Friday and checked into our hotel and the whole family came
over to meet us. What a hug fest that
was! Even my mom had driven down from Maryland to be part of
the group! There was my Aunt Becca and her husband Mack, my cousin Camille and
her partner, Bernadette, my young cousin Zander, my mom and Becca had brought
along a friend, who had just lost her husband, who was just a doll. We all went out to Olive Garden for dinner and scared a poor waiter half to
death with the eleven of us.
Saturday, we had a big cookout at my Aunt Becca’s house for
my birthday. Gosh, I’d forgotten what good cooks there were in my family, I do
declare. Becca also invited some of her
other friends to the party and it was a great time. It sure was hot, though! Thistle was running
around like a crazy dog and I had my hands full, trying to keep her from doing
her jumping greeting on everyone who came in.
She was entertained though, by Fluffernut, my Aunt’s 14 year old Jack
Russell Terrier, who definitely held her own with the puppy.
Becca made this great birthday cake, too, shaped like a
cowboy hat, that was just awesome. She
also made a blueberry pie and another cake.
Like I said, we have some great cooks in the family. I don’t think
anyone went away hungry and we sure did a lot of reminiscing about the family
that day.
On Sunday, Becca, Mom, Bernadette, Camille and I all piled
in the car with Becky’s ashes and headed down to Birmingham
to spread Becky’s ashes at the family plot at Forest Lawn
Cemetery Huntsville and had
Krystal burgers. Those are something my
mom practically lived on in her younger days, so it was a nostalgia thing for
her. Personally, I thought they were kinda nasty. They are little steamed
burgers with steamed onions on them, just like White Castle
When we got back to Becca’s house, we pulled out all the
family photos and of course, the stories came out, too. I’d tell you a bunch of
stories but it would just bore you as you don’t know all these people. After taking a bunch of our own photos, we
had to say goodbye. I’m not too sad
about it, we’ll be seeing everyone again in August when we go to Maryland for my mom’s 75th
birthday bash. My uncle Kip and my
cousins, Chuck and Rick will hopefully be able to make that one since they
weren’t able to make it to this gathering.
For our last night, Rob and I took Mom out for sushi at a
really nice Japanese restaurant. Not
something I’d expect in the south, that’s for sure. It was wonderful and they
even made the sushi into a little village!
We left early Monday morning and headed back to Denny and Paula’s in OK.
Of course, the first thing we did back in Piedmont
was jump back in the pool. By that time,
Thistle was a swimming pro and we had to actually leash her up to keep her from
getting in the water by herself. I can
safely say, she’s definitely a water dog! She can really paddle around that
pool although she seems to think she should also be drinking the water at the
same time so you can’t leave her for a second or she’ll drown. We had a really nice cook out and just
lounged around the pool and then watched as a storm rolled in across the
plains, cooling everything down nicely.
Our last evening in Piedmont ,
there was a lot of excitement! We had
three major thunderstorms converge on us and ended up having to take off to try
to save Rob’s truck from the hail that was coming! They were reporting 4 1/2 inch hail and 65
mph winds so we took off in a direction the storm was supposedly not
going. Turns out there were also
tornadoes, one touching down just three blocks from Denny’s house on one of the
very roads we had just traveled on. He found us a dirt road to get on that was
below the level of the fields, so we were flying down that for about half an
hour before the storm went over top of us. It was actually fun and exciting and
reminding me of growing up in south Texas .
Anyway, we got up in the morning and there wasn’t too much
damage, some of Denny’s corn was twisted into unrecognizable mush, but other
than that, it was all good. Some of his
friends, however, did not fair so well, getting some major hail damage. We packed up and thanked our lucky stars we
made it!
So, we’re home and full of memories. It was just awesome to see everyone. My mom looks great. Camille seems to be really happy. I really like Bernadette and wish they lived
closer, I think we’d be great friends.
Becca and Mack are as solid as ever, they’ve been married over 40 years,
I think. Zander is a typical twenty
something, wanting to fix the world and unhappy that he can’t. He reminds me a
lot of myself at that age.
Anyway, I’ve gone on enough this morning. I’m sure I’ll revisit this some more. We are very glad to be home. Despite it
snowing and being cold while we were gone, our veggies and flowers survived
just fine. We brought back a bunch of Alabama watermelons and
other fruit that will remind us of the trip. Thistle is already back to playing
with her toys and wondering what the heck that trip was all about!
Have a fabulous weekend and be nice!!!
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