Current Events:
ROAD TRIP - The beginning of May was livened up with a week-long visit from Mama & Papa Knight. The wiry old seniors decided to hop in the sled and reindeer their way 15 hours across the Eastern half of the nation. (Technically, my Mom is not a senior yet, but she's been married to one for so long, we'll have to find her guilty by association!) That trip can be a beast, so we were happy to see them when they pulled in. And they were even happier to see Avery, but that is understandable. It was a good week and they got to share plenty of grandparent/grandchild time together. Avery was spoiled as she played hooky from daycare all week and happily bummed around Richmond with Mama & Papa. The action-packed week included a zoo visit, a day at the beach, a road trip over to Colonial Williamsburg/Jamestown and two trips to Maymont (http://www.maymont.com/). Towards the end of it all, it left me wondering if the two Missouri steam engines charging through the week would have enough coal in the furnace to make it back home. But hey, I guess 60 really is the new 40. Rock on. All-in-all, some good quality time was shared and we are eyeing forward to the next visit.
Lección de Espanol - A peek inside our living room on a standard day would reveal a continuous running loop of Dora the Explorer episodes. No big surprise considering Dora and/or Diego rule the freaking Earth when you are a toddler. So with Avery it’s all Dora or all Nemo.
Harry Potter will make a cameo appearance once in a while, but you get the idea. Speaking of Diego, he's kind of a punk, riding around in his jeep thinking he's cool all the time - I mean, Dora is the original - she made it to the big time and Diego just latched on to the curtails of her success. It's like Jessica Simpson's little tramp sister Ashley lip syncing her way into the industry garnering a few ounces of success solely because her sister is a legitimate A-list knockout. Anyways, I digress... So, like any other day, Dora is on the tube doing her thing, Pamela and I are mulling through some chores while Avery is contently playing with her toys. Avery has her back to the TV while Dora counts to three in Spanish - uno, dos, tres - then to our surprise, Avery picks it up on her own and yells, "Cuatro!, Cinco!". That is when Pamela and I just look at each other in disbelief and ask the only obvious question, "Did you teach her that?" Upon further investigation, with neither of us providing any Spanish lessons, we put Avery on the spot to count to 5 starting with, "Uno". BAM! She belts out, "Dos, Tres, Cuatro, Cinco!", and just grins as bright as the morning sunshine. That was pretty sweet and Mommy & Daddy could not have been more proud. Now either, she's pretty damn smart or she watches way too much Dora. Maybe both, but since she obliterated the language barrier that day we have moved on to other basic Dora phrases, such as: "Hola Chicas!" & "Hola Amigos". "Gracias" & "Adios" get their fair share of wordplay as well.
The Pamela Report - can you say, "Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever"? Well, unfortunately after a recent tick bite, Pamela can now tell you everything you ever wanted to know about it. Its a disease sometimes carried in the little bloodsuckers, like Lyme disease, except its a hell of a lot more serious and very rare. I've always said that Pamela is one in a million, but with an estimated reporting of only 800 cases in the U.S. per year, quick math tells me that she's actually about 1 in 500,000. Still, not too shabby I guess. Anyways, we were clued in that something wasn't quite right when a red dotted rash appeared one morning on Pamela's ankles. This followed what we "thought" was a migraine that she had the day before. Well, by late afternoon, most of her legs were covered with this mysterious rash. Come the next day, things continued to worsen and had spread across her stomach & back. By this point, she's starting to freak. Having remembered that we removed a tick from her a few days prior, we hit the internet to find out what was going on. Eventually, after some research, we determined that her spotted ass needed to get to the doctors office - pronto! Apparently, the jist of it is, the disease causes your tissues and organs to hemorrhage. The blood from the hemorrhaging causes the red spots. Blah, blah, blah, right? Well, its not as serious when its happening on your legs, but as it reaches the torso it starts boring holes through your kidneys and other vitals. Left untreated, you will be in some serious Ca-Ca. Anyways, it was a Sunday evening, and so off to Patient First she scooted. Eventually, once she was checked in, she got the good once over treatment. The Docs-in-a-Box felt it necessary to test for everything under sun since they had never seen a case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever before. Eventually, Pamela became the side-show at a circus. Once they actually diagnosed it as RM spotted fever then it was like she was a three-headed monster. At one point, one of the docs pokes his head out the door and is like, "Hey Larry, get in here, you gotta see this." Anyways, after a hearty 10-day dose of anti-biotics, all was well. Pamela was actually back to normal within a few days, so we were lucky the situation was not a lot worse.
Good bye to a good ol' boy - Kahlua will forever live on in the hearts of those who knew and loved him deeply. As we move forward, we take the many great memories of his life with us.
For those close to him, he touched us all in special ways and he will be truly missed. For those that did not have the pleasure of knowing him, Kahlua was a big frothy, playful 120-pound chocolate lab. Pamela got him as a pup in college but he eventually became "the family dog" as her parents inherited him when she moved away after graduation. His hearty spirit stayed strong even when time took its toll on his body. He lived a great, full life and today we are happy that he shared part of ours. Good bye Big Bear - we love you!
