Now for my comments re: The Crew
Joann, my younger daughter, is a wonderful person, too. In fact, I don't think there is another mother who is prouder of her daughters than I. Both of my girls have matured into beautiful, intelligent, loving, compassionate women. And they're leaders of their own packs. Susan is a Partner in her CPA Firm and Joann is an Assistant Principal in an elementary school. What better proof of their leadership skills!!
Susan achieved her success through trials and tribulations that she can share if she wishes. All I can say is "Well, done!"
Joann, too, had many hurdles in her path. It's hard for me to remember all of them even though I jumped each hurdle by her side. Through all her hard work, the rewards are many; especially her hubby, newly teen-aged daughter, and almost 11 year old twin sons.
Now that Susan and Family are flying to WDW with me from Memphis, Joann will be providing transportation to and from the airport for all of us.
I truly wish that Jo's family could have joined us, but they have had what I consider the ultimate 'magic' at WDW. They went in December a few years ago.
I joined them even though it almost cost me my job at the time. Can you imagine anyone not understanding why a grandmother would want to take 4 days off of work to join Mickey and Minnie? Well, all I can say is that after nearly 40 years in the school system, I was more than ready to put my job on the line to go to WDW.
So I went with them and had a mystical marvelous time. If you haven't gone in December, you need to do so. There is nothing like what I call "twin magic" = Christmas and Mickey. If you go, be sure to go to Mickey's afterhours party. It was a little chilly, but there were "free" hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookie stops throughout the park. The Main Street Parade was indescribable. Can you imagine snow in Florida? Well, it happened on Main Street during the parade.
OK, back to The Supporting Actors
Susan was destined to have a Golden Retriever in her life at all times. You see, when she came home from the hospital at the ripe old age of three days, the first family member to greet her was Rex (Wrecks!).
Here's the story:
Susan's Father and I had wedding plans for August, 1965. But a little thing happened on the way to the church.....no, not a pregnancy.......a war! So her dad said "I got orders to go to Viet Nam today and I talked to the base chaplain and we're getting married here at Ft. Campbell Saturday."
Now, I (Bride) was in Indianapolis with my mom and little sis (Maid of Honor.) Joe, Susan's father, (Groom) was at Ft. Campbell, Ky. Joe's Cousin (Best Man) was in Memphis. My uncle (to walk me down the aisle) was in Nashville. Joe's mother, stepfather, and brothers were in Terre Haute, Indiana. My cousins and close friends (Bridesmaids) were scattered throughout Indiana, Tennessee, and Missouri. His cousins and friends (Groomsmen) were scattered throughout Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
That phone call came on a Tuesday night as I was addressing wedding invitations. I had not even had my first fitting of my wedding gown. And we had to schedule three pre-marital conferences with the chaplain before the wedding. Somehow, everything got done and all of the important people got to the church on time.
We were married for a few weeks before the big green bird flew Joe "westward." After tearfully waving him goodbye, I drove my little red Corvair filled with "all our earthly marital possessions" home to Indy to live with my Mom and Sis until Joe came home from the battleground.
Thankfully, he made it through the "storm" and we finally were able to start a "stable" married life. (More on that later.....perhaps.)
Anyway, the first thing we did was to go to his mom's house for a couple of days. He had a job with P&G waiting for him in Portsmouth, VA. We needed some furniture for our new home in Virginia. But in his mind, we needed a dog first.
Enter Rex. We bought a VERY FRISKY Golden Retriever puppy and a dinette set.
I got to name the puppy. Since I thought he looked like a lion cub, and since the lion is the King of the Jungle, and since the Latin word for "king" is "rex" well, you can guess the rest. However, after he lived in the house with us for a few weeks, I changed the spelling to "Wrecks."
I immediately got preggers with Susan and Rex/Wrecks accepted her the minute we brought her home. She was a dainty little pink bundle barely weighing 6 lbs. He was a clumbsy big furry ball of energy weighing close to 86 lbs. But he never once hurt her and became her guard dog the first night she was home. Wherever Susie was, there was Rex/Wrecks. If she was awake, he was in the same room with her. If she was asleep, he was reclined peacefully under her crib. How sweet.
Anyway, through the years there may have been other pets (cats, birds, poodles, ****Zus, wiener dogs, bunnies, turkeys, hamsters, etc.) there was always a Golden Retriever in Susan's life.
And the current supporting actors are two of the sweetest she has ever had.
Kudos to Magic and Harry.
* Work with Katie to create our rough daily itinerary (not much help from Katie, but I worked on it)
But that gives Caitlin time to decide if she wants to surf.)
)
You're quite an inspiration!
has come and gone. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that I got reservations at every restaurant I wanted. The bad news is they aren't all the days/times we wanted.
) and we started with Cali Grill on Monday night, just like we wanted it. Well, they had a couple of split tables near the 8:30 slot I wanted, but nothing close enough for me to consider splitting our group. So she checked all the other dates of our trip, and the times for tables of 5 were similar for all nights. We could either go for a 9:20 or a 7:40. Finally, I reverted to 7:40 on the originally-planned night. I figure we can check in and tell them we're not in a big hurry, so if they are running behind, we're fine. Then we will probably have an hour or more after dinner before Wishes. At that point, we can either hang out at the bar at CG, maybe walk around the Contemporary for a bit, or we may even decide to go on over to MK for the whole Wishes experience. Who knows? We'll play it by ear.
BINGO!!
