What a month we had in June! Bob got the big "C" scare, but we found out this week that everything is okay! We fretted for weeks, waiting for test results and doctors visits. A trip to the doctor to see if he had a fishbone in his throat turned out to be the discovery of him having Hashimoto's disease, as well as a nodule on his thyroid. The ultrasound of the nodule showed clacification, so they were concerned it was cancer. Last week he went for the biopsy, and we got the good news on Monday! Very thankful!
Mya and I went on our "all girls" vacation with Mom, my sister, and my sisters 4 girls. Had a great time. Hope to have pictures soon (that's a rant all it's own). I think the highlight was the Zoo at Gulf Shores. The Little Zoo That Could, which truly is their logo, is such a fabulous place to take small children, especially animal lovers. I would say 80% of the animals at the zoo are able to be fed by the visitors. Tigers not included! LOL! We bought a cup of zoo puffs and started on our merry way. First stop, low an behold, was the kangaroo pen. Or they may have been wallaby's, I'm not sure. Looked like kangaroos, and Mya called them kangaroo's, so I'm going with kangaroo's. Mya was able to go into the pen and hold, and feed, a baby. I'm so anxious to see those pictures! I don't think anything could have ruined that moment for Mya. We spent 15 to 20 minutes with the baby kangaroo, and I finally told Mya we needed to move along. As we passed the animals, she had to stop and feed each one that had their nose sticking through their pen. I tried to explain to her about putting the zoo puffs in the palm of her hand and letting the animals eat from her hand, but no, that's not the "Mya way". She had to give each animal an individual puff. You can imagine how long that cup of zoo puffs lasted! LOL! Actually, we ended up throwing about a fourth of the cup of puffs into the duck pond on our way out. For the rest of our week in Gulf Shores, Mya wanted to go back to the zoo! It was great!
While we were in Gulf Shores, we stayed at a beach view condo. We made the reservations in early March and were really concerned what we would find on the beaches when we arrived. To our surprise, the beaches were white and the water clear. My sister, Stacey, and I had been watching the news, monitoring the oil, and were hearing a lot of stories. Of course, when we called the condo people, they assured us everything was fine, but we were a little leary. A few weeks before our check in date, Stacey called the dolphin cruise people, Southern Rose, and asked them what was going on. The lady at Southern Rose told her to cancel the reservations and not even think about coming! The dolphin cruises were shut down, the parasailing (which is one thing Mom wanted to do) was shut down, the beaches are closed one day, open the next, the water isn't fit, and so on. Okay, now what? Do we go, or do we try to find something on the east coast? We talked it over with Mom, and Mom said we would go as planned and just deal with anything we encounter. As I said above, we were pleasantly surprised to see the clean beaches and clear water. Now, we did notice each morning the "oil slicks" floating on the water, but by noon or so, they were gone. I'm not sure what to call it, other than oil slick, although I don't think that's the correct word. I took pictures and will share when I get them. To describe in words, it looked like a small streak of oatmeal floating on the water. The oatmeal would float in each morning, and then disappear. Thursday evening we walked to the beach, and it was a different story. The first thing you notice is the smell. Think of the smell in an auto body shop, that's about as close of description as you can get. We hadn't noticed the smell the previous 3 days we were there. Secondly, we noticed the water this evening, it was a deep reddish, almost black, color. We were quite surprised since we had seen nothing like this since our arrival. Later than night, sitting on the balcony, we noticed ships lining up on the horizon. In watching the news, we found out the ships were putting up a boom to try and contain the oil. The next morning we fully expected the white beach to be black, but it wasn't. The crews working in Gulf Shores, cleaning the beaches, were/are doing an excellent job in keeping their area as pristine as possible. I'm not sure if the crews are locals, or out of state, or if they volunteered, or are on a payroll, but who ever they are, they deserve a standing ovation for the outstanding job.
Tomorrow is our big 4th of July shindig at Papaw's farm. I'm sure Papaw is hoping for 700 people or more to attend this year, but I bet my Mom is hoping for 70! LOL! Mom works so hard getting everything prepared and making sure things run as smoothly as possible. It's a lot of hard work, before and after, but it brings a lot of joy to the people attending. My uncles do a great job with the fireworks! It's nothing as orchestrated as Thunder Over Louisville, but for a bunch of country folk, it's a nice 30 to 45 minute fireworks show! The kids love it!
I keep mentioning "when I get my pictures", so I'll explain that big thorn in my side! I didn't want to risk ruining my good digital camera at the beach, so I decided to take my 35mm camera instead. I did the same thing last year and it worked out great! I'm not a patient person when it comes to getting my pictures. I ALWAYS use 1 hour development. While we were on vacation, I had 4 rolls of film that I took to the local Wal-Mart to get developed. Low and behold, Wal-Mart no longer develops film in an hour, they only do send out. Okay, fine, I'll have to wait until I get back home and take it to my local Wal-Mart. Surely they still develop film??? NO! I had no choice, if I wanted matte finish prints, but to send it out. According to the chart, if you send your film out on Saturday or Sunday, before 2pm, it will be available for pick up on Thursday, after 6pm. Last night I rushed to the store to get my film, hardly containing my excitement, only to find out, it hadn't been returned. I explained to the guy that "the chart says" and he said the truck only picks up on Saturday and Tuesday, so if I dropped my film off on Saturday, after 2pm, it didn't get picked up until Tuesday. I still referred him to the chart, but I don't think he was getting it. I told him they might want to think about updating the chart! Now it will be Saturday before I can get my pictures. In reality, it will be Sunday for me because we have the 4th of July party going on, and I won't dare leave, and lose my parking space, to go get the pictures. Whew! I'm liking Wal-Mart less and less these days. You can bet I will be taking a digital camera on my next vacation!
Have a safe and happy 4th of July!
TTFN!
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