Summertime

Darling Amanda turned 27 over the Memorial Day weekend. She had friends and family over to our house for an old fashioned hot-dog, hamburger cookout. It was a modest little gathering by Jackson standards but a whole lot of fun never the less. I made note that we had our first Amanda birthday party in this back yard twenty one years ago, celebrating her 6th birthday. That backyard has seen a lot of memories. I've been blessed to be surrounded by many people with musical talent, so most all the parties had live music of some sort. This was no different. The evening ended with the un-holy trio of Lance (Amanda's husband), Lance's brother Blake and their good friend Eric digging through a box of song charts I had, looking for something to perform. Now, understand the charts are nothing more than the lyrics with the chords written above them. So, if you don't know the song, you are out of luck.

Unless you are the un-holy trio. Eric and Lance provided the guitar licks and Blake sang the songs, making up the melodies as they went along. If only those songwriters could have been there to see what they could have written instead of what they did. Help me make it through the night has a whole new deal. Sorry Kris!

As said, there have been many good memories spawned at Amanda's parties. Our friends Curt and Karen, just a little tipsy, swinging hard on our wooden swing until the S hook straightened out and they went crashing to the ground. No one harmed.

And my old best friends brother Jerry waving his arms around as he got more involved in the story he was telling until I warned him to watch out for the ceiling fan. "What fan?" he said sticking his hand straight up and destroying a $400 ceiling fan. Yeah, I know, you can buy'm for fifty bucks, but not if your wife wants just that one particular fan.

The one thing that we all agreed on was that it was a good thing to be older because the party ended at a reasonable hour instead of going to the wee hours.

Well, happy birthday baby and next year you'll have that little one to help celebrate. Probably means the party will end even sooner.

That's OK.