From Me to You ...

Happy 13th birthday, Kelsey! I wanted you to open your birthday present on your actual birthday. Wow. What a concept. Anyway, it's not in the mail yet (bad auntie) so I opened it for you. This might be a little unconventional, but so am I. I have a tattoo with the same symbol (bad auntie again). I hope you enjoy it immensely.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

Andi-
I hope you had a fantastic birthday, I'll call you to wish you a happy belated birthday as soon as I can. You're getting so old! You're going to be out of high school before long. I miss you so much! I can't wait to see you this summer when you come to stay with us at the beach. Once again, a very Happy Birthday! I love you!
Love,
Kelsey

XOXOXOXOXOXO

Dearest Andi

!Happy Birthday!

I hope you had a really wonderful day. Sorry we didn't call - we will. You'll have to tell us what you did. I hope you sprinkled yourself and everyone around you with fairy-dust and danced around the desert with the fairies and coyotes in your dreams. You're a very, very special cousin and a beautiful girl and we can't wait to see you again.

Lots and Lots of Love,

Taylor, Kelsey, Mike, Paula, and Zia

Laughter & Love

April 25th, 2006
Amarillo, TX

Sydney

Hi, everyone! I was running through our pictures from our recent trip to Amarillo. Here are two sweet shots of Sydney. She is quite the fashion model.

Happy Mothers' Day!

Happy day to all of you! I hope you're having relaxing, joyous hours. Children aren't driving you crazy? Well, Grammy doesn't need to see hers.
:-)
Love you muchly muchly much.
Taylor

Starbucks

Happy birthday, Sis-boom-bah! Your time away sounds like heaven to me. I'm glad you had such a nice weekend.

Starbucks ... every time I see a Starbucks billboard I'm perplexed. Starbucks has to be an extremely profitable business. Lots o' moola for advertising & such. Why is their print advertising so lame? I don't mean to be rude, but there must be something more catchy than "Cup holders prepare to be filled". I could have come up with that & you might have laughed.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Hiya,

Sorry to those of you whose calls I did not respond to over the birthday weekend. I was in seclusion, getting some glorious downtime. No one to get anything for, no requests of any kind, no healthy meals to prepare, no going to bed early, no getting up early, etc, etc, etc.... For my birthday, I had two wonderful nights in a hotel. Kevin took the kids the first night and then Grammy took them and Kevin joined me the second night. Thank God for awesome husbands and wonderful grandparents. I remember when I was a kid and I would ask Grammy what she wanted for her birthday. She always said, "peace and quiet". I couldn't think of anything more boring and really couldn't believe her. Now I get it! Anyway, I had a great time. I went to 2 movies, had salad, chocolate, and wine for dinner in my hotel room, watched Coyote Ugly competitions on T.V. (don't ask) and read until 1:00 am. It was heaven. So, I had a wonderful 29th birthday! Love you all and thanks for all the well wishes, Auntie M

Celtic Woman

Assalamu 'alaykum,
Yesterday me mam and I went to the Celtic Woman show. It was good, although I would prefer if they did more traditional Irish music and less pop-type songs. But the four singers have beautiful voices, and the violinist/fiddler, Máiréad Nesbitt, who I've loved for a while, was fantastic.
Well, I don't know if any of you watched the Derby, but the favorite, Barbaro, won. Edgar Prado, the jockey, has been in the Derby some 15 times and this was his first win. Barbaro remains undefeated, so let's hope he can get the Preakness on May 20th.
I've told Dad to visit the blog, but I don't know if he has yet. And we have to teach him how to post.
Love you all dearly.
Sláinte is Fáilte,
Taylor
(That's "health and greetings" in Irish).

HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA

Auntie M-
This is a little late, but I wanted to wish you a happy birthday! We tried to call you that night, but you were out and about. I hope you had a fantastic birthday! Love you and miss you a ton!
K

You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too, yeah
They say it's you birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you!
- The Beatles

Derby Day

Wow, what a bird's nest story. I'm glad Sam is smiling.
Well, there's nothing exciting going on here except that today is the Kentucky Derby! I'm very excited, although I've been out of touch with the horse racing world for two or three years. One of the favorites, Brother Derek, is born and bred in Oregon. That's him in the picture - what a cutie. Also, Beverly Lewis, who went to the University of Oregon, has an entry. She and her husband, who I just found out died in February, have raced a good number of horses in the Derby, and have won it twice.
Also, tomorrow I'm going to the show Celtic Woman. It's a music group of five women, I think mostly from Ireland (I'm a fan of the fiddler). They're record has gone Platinum. It should be a good show.
Love you all,
Taylor

Broken Arm & Bird Nest Trauma

We're borrowed Grammy and Poppy's camera so we could take a picture of Sam's arm. Then, we had a bird nest rescue this morning that we had to document. I don't know if you remember the chair on the back porch that I had laid some big sheets of cloth over, but a Carolina Wren couple built a nest in them. We always worried about Midnight discovering it because it is so low to the ground. The mother laid 5 eggs which finally hatched. And, finally Midnight discovered the nest. When we woke up Andi noticed the nest had been damaged and a baby bird was teetering on the edge. There was a bird coming to the nest. Don't know if it is the father, mother or both. I'm wondering if Midnight got one of them. The female was staying with the little ones while the male was coming and feeding. Now, there is no adult in the nest but one of them is flying back and forth feeding. Anyway, Kevin nudged the baby back in and then went to the hardware store to get some supplies to cage them in and away from Midnight. Seems to be working great. The adult can get in to feed but Midnight can't. That was our excitement today.

Tongue

How will we ever teach Danijela to stop sticking her tongue out?
It's in the girl's genes!

GENE POOL

What a great web site! It is so much fun to hear what everyone is doing. We could learn a little more about each other...WOW!

I have just returned from three weeks in Dallas and Amarillo. The contractor pulled out of my Dallas project, so I am looking for a new one. What a pain! I am sure that things will be better without him. It seems that his ego was hurt by a woman boss. I still need to do a lot of stuff in Dallas, but am looking forward to tackling some projects at home like refinishing and slipcovering furniture. I have enough projects around here to keep me busy forever.

Poppy and I are going to New Hamphire in June for his 50th Dartmount class reunion. Then we will travel to Vermont for a few days visit with old roommates and this wives. Poppy is so good about keeping up with old friends.....and this will be a fun trip.

We have a rough draft complete for our Oregon trip. Poppy and I will spend some time in Corvallis and with Mike in Portland and then with all on the coast. Thank you Mike for making the arrangements for our visit on the coast.

T and K, tell your Dad that he needs to check the site.

Love to all,
G

GENE POOL