You’ve met my youngest grandie, Samantha Lynn Mayne Casey, many times on this blog. I’ve been chronicling our adventures for ten years now and we’ve watched her grow. She is the youngest of my four grandies, born the year I retired, and we’ve had so many wonderful adventures together — watching “toodles”, playing with Paw Patrol, riding our Magic Carpets to DisneyWorld, weekly sleep-overs, drawing lots of pictures, learning to play the piano — and we look forward to making many more memories to cherish. She has always been a happy little girl and a joy to her Jojo and Grandpa.
Birth! 1 year
She’s busy today at an Archery tournament, so we celebrated together last Monday at Eastland Mall. Build-a-Bear has a birthday bear that costs a dollar per year of your existence, so our mission was to add all the bells and whistles and clothes to make a great new stuffie. Mission Accomplished…
Then we were off to the food court for some ice cream rolls from DinoIce. She chose a concoction of strawberries and banana in her ice cream rolls, topped with cotton candy, made right there with special strawberry flavoring, that was to die for.
I had a freebie coupon from Bath & Body, so we also picked up an Ariel hangy thing for her backpack. We were happy.
There are no words that adequately express the Love we feel for our children and grandchildren, but we try…
Happiest of Birthdays, dear Samantha! I wish you Love and Happiness for all of your days.
Where have the years gone? As I watched this little imp grow up, I’ve grown old…er.
We did a photoshoot on Sunday when I presented her presents.
About seven or eight years ago, Nova, the artist formerly known as Olivia, was with us on a family vacation to Disney World. In the Germany Pavilion, she put up a request for a Duffy bear, and I quickly shot it down — it was a $50 teddy bear and I was being cheap. She wasn’t happy with me. All of these years, I’ve felt guilty about that and this year I determined to buy her a Duffy while we were at WDW. Duffy, by the way, is allegedly the teddy bear of Mickey Mouse. To my dismay, the only Duffy bears sold today are at Tokyo or Hong Kong Disney.
So I took to Ebay and found a lovely Happy Birthday Duffy that I ordered up. When the package arrived and I opened it, there was a Velveteen Rabbit — very sweet, but Not Duffy. The seller got in touch to say she had sent Duff to the wrong person and if we’d both send them back, we’d get it all straightened out. We did, but in the meantime, I was refunded my money. I tried to get the money to the seller, but according to their rules, I couldn’t send a check. When I told them who Duffy was for, they requested I give the $$ to my grand-daughter alongside Duffy. Sweet. Doesn’t get much cheaper than that, huh?
She loved it…
Obviously, I love this young lady, but I also admire and respect her. She’s a good kid and gives me great hope for the future of our world.
Join me in wishing her a lifetime of Happiness and Peace…
Today is the Number Nine birthday of Samantha Lynn Mayne Casey and I am More than nine years grateful that she was born. She is the only grandie who was born in Evansville and who, therefore, I have been able to spoil on an every-day basis all of her life. It has been a joy. I asked her the other day if she would stop visiting me every week when she gets older (like her Sissy) and she replied, “Probably”. Truth there, as even a Spectacular Jojo takes a backseat when adolescence takes the wheel, but for now we still play, even riding our magic carpets every so once in a while, so I hang on to every moment I get.
We celebrated “our” birthday on Monday at Gattitown. I really enjoy that place and the food is pretty good. Michael and Jess came along, though Jess had to leave and get back to work. Nova and Aiden, aka Shark, joined in the fun.
Samantha will be back tomorrow for her usual Friday Night Sleepover and Saturday JAM piano lesson and we’ll turn our minds to our upcoming Disney trip.
Oh, I sort of passed my stress test –at least I didn’t drop dead. I’ll tell you all about it in my Sunday Report. Until then,
I didn’t give enough space to our local birthday party, celebrating Samantha’s 7th and my 69th birthdays. Here’s a little montage of that day, February 19th…
I have now officially ridden Every Ride in the Walt Disney World parks, knocking out my last two at Animal Kingdom. I had put off the Rite of Passage ride when I was having some back problems several years ago and I wish I’d ridden earlier! It is now my Favorite Ride! We were pretty chill after our early mornings and spent a lot of time hanging out at pool bars (and pools) around the resort. I marked off “visit Nomad Lounge” from my must-do list, too. We had perfect weather…
Spring greeted us when we arrived back here at Sonnystone, and it was so beautiful last week that we were outside cleaning up and planning this year’s gardens. It’s time to start seeds inside, we plant our peas and potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day and I am impatient, as usual. I hope to start a Gardening Series on Thursdays and keep you up to date on how the garden is growing.
I used the nice weather as an excuse to procrastinate finishing up my Ancestry to 1945. I’m really going to get it written this week, I tell myself. I’m very ready to wind up that blog and spend more time here at the Acres providing you with plenty of Blather and Balderdash.
I would say that this has been the Best Birthday Week Ever, but I’ve had some pretty good Birthday Weeks so I’ll simply say that I’ve had Another Best Birthday Week. Starting on the 23rd with the Monorail Crawl (going from the Polynesian to the Grand Floridian to the Contemporary stopping for Rum Drinks and Birthday wishes), and ending up on the evening of the 28th riding the Rise of the Resistance in Galaxy’s Edge, it has been charmed.
Oh, the weather was cold and windy, but we Laugh in the face of Weather.
While we were in central Florida we visited Aunt Shirley in Melbourne, staying the night with Cousin Kim. I want to visit them every month or so now, though their weather was no better.
I was thinking about all the different Jos I’ve been–a different person every year celebrating Birthdays 1-67. Not all of mySelves were Great, but each one brought its own gift. You couldn’t pay me to be 20 again…but 40 was nice… Oh, well, she’s in here somewhere..
We cruised on home yesterday, already thinking about going back. I haven’t gone through all of the pictures of the trip yet, so I’ll do a Travelogue-type post later this week.
The News from Sonnystone Acres 