Merry Christmas from
the Deep South!
It has been another unusual year for
weather here. We had hardly any winter
at all. The spring flowers bloomed in
February because it was so warm. This
gave rise to record breaking pollen counts.
It reached an all time high on March 20th when it measured
9369. We ran air conditioning on St.
Patrick’s Day. The warmer than normal
winter and spring continued into a hot summer.
July of 2012 was the hottest on record for the US, but we didn’t feel that
it was any worse than usual as it is always hot here in July. Fall was late. Many of our trees still had green leaves
beyond Halloween. Super storm Sandy had
some peripheral presence in GA. The
mountain counties had ice and snow and much of the eastern half of the state
had heavy wind, but little to no rain. We have wondered and worried about our
friends and family who live in the areas that were hardest hit by Sandy. The very mild weather continued through the
first week of December with temperatures in the mid 70s. I was able to go out walking in the early
evenings wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts.
In 2011 we were disappointed Braves
fans when they failed to reach the post season after a disastrous September
swoon. This year we were disappointed
again when the Braves reached the post season as one of two wild card teams,
only to lose the one game wild card playoff.
Maybe 2013 will be more promising.
As
a family, we had many wonderful and momentous events to celebrate this
year. Eric graduated on May 5th
from the GT School of Management with his MBA degree. Amber’s family made the trip from Warsaw, VA
and joined us as we marked Eric’s achievement.
Samsung in Dallas, TX offered him a job as a product planning manager
for smartphones in September of 2011 following his internship there. He accepted the offer and began working there
on May 21st of this year. In
June he was featured in a Forbes.com article about a technical innovation in
the area of NFC (near field communication) that he had proposed while he was an
intern. He received many envious
congratulations from his MBA classmates as being the first of their class to
“make Forbes”. Since May Eric has made a
few business trips to South Korea. We
really miss having Eric, Amber and their two cats, Cinna and Slate living less
than ten miles from us. The next big occasion took place on September 1st in Barboursville, VA when Eric and Amber were married in a lovely outdoor ceremony. The day began with a lot of rain that had the appearance of being an “all day soaker”. There were still showers and overcast skies well into the afternoon, but just when Amber walked down the aisle, the sun came out. Amber was a most beautiful bride in her Monique Lhuillier gown. The wedding and reception were held at the Barboursville Vineyards, which are about ten miles from Charlottesville. They are known for award winning wines under the Octagon label and gourmet food at their Palladio Restaurant. Eric and Amber gave a lot of thought to the menu. Prior to the sit down dinner there were numerous hors d’oeuvres. The meal included an Antipasto course of local greens with roasted beets, goat cheese, and toasted walnuts topped with sherry vinaigrette; the Primo course was sweet pepper risotto with braised beef brisket and crispy onions. The Secondi, or main course, was a choice of grilled Piedmontese beef loin with red wine demi glace, potato gratin and green beans; or marinated grilled quail with sweet onion jus, herbed potato purée and sautéed baby squash; or roasted wild salmon in lobster tarragon butter sauce with a wild rice cake and baby arugula. And of course, there was a wedding cake of alternating tiers of white cake with raspberry filling and spice cake. The groom’s cake was triple chocolate mousse. All of this was complemented by BV Octagon wine. There were endless lists of details covering the wedding and reception that assured the success of the day. Martha Stewart couldn’t have done it any better!! For us, being able to see our family and friends made the day even more wonderful and special.
About six weeks after the wedding we travelled to Savannah for the birth of our second granddaughter. Keira was born at 10:37 am on October 12th. She weighed 8 lbs. 1 oz. We got to hold Keira when she was four hours old. She was very healthy at birth and she looked so beautiful. We think that Keira will look more like Kristin as time goes on, whereas Alexis really favors Jim in appearance. If Keira had been born six days earlier, I would have had the birthday present to end all birthday presents. We took care of Alexis while Jim, Kristin and Keira were in the hospital. At 22 months, Alexis is full of energy. Fortunately, we were able to keep up with her. She was no trouble at all. We were amazed at how much she knows. Alexis loves to build towers with her set of blocks.
Our traveling this year was all family related. We visited Kristin, Jim and Alexis many times. We added extra days to these trips so we could spend time at Jekyll Island or at the recently renovated King and Prince Hotel on St. Simons Island. At the end of October we returned from a trip to TX to see Eric and Amber and the cats. Before arriving in Dallas, we stopped in Memphis the first night. We had high hopes of eating barbecue at Neely’s; they have a show on the Food Network. We were disappointed to discover that the restaurant was closed for renovations. We spent the next three nights at the Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, MO. The lodge is in a beautiful setting in the Ozarks, surrounded by lakes, about ten miles from Branson. The resort was established by the man who founded the Bass Pro Shops. I have always wanted to see some shows in Branson since I love live performances. We saw Shoji Tabuchi who does a very animated and colorful show featuring his talent on the fiddle and violin. Next we saw the Oak Ridge Boys. They are older than we are, but they still put on a great show. The last show we saw was the Neil Diamond Tribute Show done by a man who looks a lot like Neil Diamond. We enjoyed hearing many of his songs. Branson does attract the “Hollywood has-beens” and some of the theatres are pretty old now, but we still liked the experience. From Branson we drove to Tulsa, OK and spent one night there. Then it was on to Dallas. For our first full day there we went to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center. The next day we drove over to Ft. Worth. Whereas Dallas is new, modern and cosmopolitan, Ft. Worth still has the “frontier feel” to it. We watched the cattle being paraded down the main street by the stockyards. Since the weather was so nice, we enjoyed that and also visiting the Ft. Worth Botanic Garden. We had a wonderful time with Eric, Amber, Cinna and Slate. We drove from Dallas to Vicksburg, MS. A number of years ago we had toured some historic towns along the Mississippi River including Houma, LA, Natchez and Vicksburg. We re-visited the Vicksburg National Military Park on this trip. The park is huge and there is a sixteen mile drive that takes you by the significant battle sites of Vicksburg’s part in the Civil War. The final leg of the trip was from Vicksburg to home, about 460 miles. In all, we logged 2240 miles – almost all of it driven by Mike. Even though much of the route utilized interstates, the time on the road was frustrating because of the amount of truck traffic; and also the fact that the interstates are so old now that there were many stretches where they were under repair, making it slow going on the uneven pavement, alongside cement barriers or barrels.
We will be spending Christmas in Rincon-Savannah with Kristin, Jim and “the girls”. We are looking forward to that.
We have an interesting trip planned for late August and early September of 2013. We will be on a cruise that begins in Amsterdam with ports of call at Stavanger and Bergen in Norway; Reykjavik, Iceland; Nanortalik, Greenland; St. John’s, Newfoundland; and Halifax, Nova Scotia before arriving in New York City.
We hope that all is well with you and wish you Happy Holidays.
