2006/08/21
M.French, M.French, S.French, A.French
Morgan T., Clifton, and Meredth arrived about 11pm Thursday evening. Morgan was already in bed and would talk to them in the morning. Maxine was up and greeted them. They talked for a while, then to bed. Morgan T. and Meredith were upstairs, Cliff was in the basement. He always stays in the basement on the fold-out couch.
Everyone got up early except Meredith who got up about 11am. Maxine had a lot of paperwork, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, reference documents, and other mail that needed to be sorted and disposed of. Morgan T. does that every few months and helps maintain the household.
Stewart and Anne originally planned on flying in on Friday, leaving on Monday. But with the terrorist scare at the airports, and the need to arrive 2-3 hours early and check practically everything instead of carrying it on, they figured out that it would be almost as fast to drive, and much more flexible. Stewart called American Airlines and got the tickets turned into vouchers for future travel and cancelled the rental car. They started driving at 4am Friday morning, a 12 hour drive through Texarkana, Memphis, Nashville, and into Elizabethtown at 4pm Central, 5pm Eastern.
Their trip was uneventful. They listened to a Book-On-CD, Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. It was 85 degrees in Plano when we left at 4am. The day before in Dallas hit a high of 105. It was the 32nd day over 100 degrees. They were looking forward to some cool temperatures. Even with the A/C on they got 38 mpg! KY was supposed to have a high of 89 degrees for the weekend. They had prepped some dried fruits, grapes, apples, trail mix, grape tomatoes so they could drive straight through, which they did, only stopping once for gas.
Friday evening Stewart and Anne drove in to Elizabethtown, to the Hampton Inn, and checked in. After talking with Morgan T. on the cell, they drove over to the Golden Corral in Elizabethtown and met Morgan, Maxine, Meredith, Clifton, and Morgan T. for dinner. It was really packed! We greeted, talked, and ate a fine meal. Then back to the French house for conversations. Stewart and Anne left about 8:30pm to get some sleep.
Saturday was the Milby reunion. We had never seen or met some of them, relatives from a different part of the Milby family. People started arriving about 10am carefully parking their cars in the grass.
Coy Milby told Maxine that he had not seen her since she was 4 years old when her daddy died. He told Stewart that Roxie and Maxine would come over and play with him when he was young, 80 years ago! He couldn't remember which one of them was meanest. They all, every last one of them, seemed to enjoy talking with , walking all around the back yard, busy visiting with each other and getting all the scoop of each others lives. Maxine and Morgan had cleaned the metal building before anyone arrived and it was spotless. All the tools, lawnmowers, tractors, blowers, leave sweepers, and wagons were pushed against the wall to make room for the tables, chairs, and food. This was our backup plan in case it rained. We setup two big fans near the windows to keep the place cool in case it got warm, which it did. Although the temperature wasn't too bad, everyone was pretty sticky due to the humidity, and even that gave us something more to talk about!
We had setup 5 big tables for the food. Everyone who came brought _tons_ of food!
Pete about giant fans with misting systems; Gladys is 90 years old and doing good; Jim and Judy's yearly trip to Florida with their extended families; Cleston and Geneva brought their grandson Caleb; Coy's pig-valve heart surgery with the doctor that had done the very first heart surgery in Louisville (the pig's still in there!); Archie brought a bunch of fresh tomatoes, red, yellow, and pink; Faye's orange Merrels that matched her outfit; Eddie told us about the UofL library that burned down and burned their two coloring books (ha!), and his new devil dog; Joyce brought us up to date on Aunt Roxie, who was not able to make it; Joyce and Whitney are roommates while Whitney is going to college at WKU, working part-time.
People started leaving about 3:30pm. We all agreed to come again next year, the third Saturday in August.
Sunday arrived with a tremendous storm, lightening and thunder, wind and rain. The weather looked pretty grim. We really thought that people would cancel, but _nobody_ did! About 9am the rain stopped, it started drying, when Walter Lewis, Ruth, and Lynn arrived first. We had cleaned up the metal building in prep for Sunday and we were sitting in the doorway waiting for everyone. Everybody start arriving and socializing, piling up more food, to the ceiling! We had even more food Sunday than we had on Saturday!
Since monday was Morgan's birthday, Diana had brought a large sheet cake with Happy Birthday marking on it. Her cat had cristened it by walking across the boxtop, pushing it into the frosting and leaving little kitty paw prints in frosting on the bottom of the lid. (It was Humongous! a southern tradition to bring more food than anybody could possibly eat, it's better to have too much than too little. :-) We all gathered around and celebrated.
Conversations
Hubie, Jacob, Justin, Sims, (others?) went out to the Patton Museum. Ricky, Diana, Jennifer, Melissa, Christina (with James Edward) were left waiting for them to come back. We had a very good time sitting around and listening to stories about Ricky and Diana when they younger running a 3-wheeled wagon down a steep gravel road; Melissa in Europe; stories about Lynn's 3 golden retrievers; Stewart and Anne's two kittens; Christina's ferret James Edward; and stories of Walter and Ed when they were younger; Diana's experiences preparing historic markers for Mercer county and Harrodsburg; Jim and Judy's experiences as teachers and administrators in Indianapolis; Hubie's research with steroids and premature babies; Justin's photos of the kids climbing on the tanks out at Patton Museum (and the cheerleaders!); Anne, Cliff, and Meredith on Geo Caching; lots of discussions about Katrina, Rita, and New Orleans.
Maxine and Cliff went to E-town shopping. They tried to go to the mall Sunday night, but it had closed at 5pm. Today it didn't open till 10am! So they went and ate some breakfast to wait for the mall to open. Morgan T. drove to Radcliff and did some errands, dropping some things to be shipped home, and dropping off some items at Goodwill.
Stewart and Anne arrived about 8:30am from the hotel. Anne and Maxine prepared Morgan's birthday cake. We held another small birthday celebration for Morgan, his 87th birthday. Only 13 more to get to 100! Maxine's hair dresser, Anita (no known last name), made a wonderful pudding/coconut cake, along with some macaroni salad for us. We had this at Dad's birthday celebration. Dad got 2 hats and an electric razor, and "...more cards than I ever got before!"
Morgan T., Cliff, and Meredith packed up and headed to Louisville and the airport at 12 noon. We paused to get some photos as they loaded into the car.
Maxine, Morgan, Stewart, and Anne went through the basement to see what else could be taken home or to Goodwill, that would give Maxine more room in the basement, and make it easier to clean. We loaded up the truck with stuff and drove it up to Goodwill. These are things that ...someone could get some use out of...
