Memorial Day 2009

Memorial Day marks the beginning of our summer. It's a day to remember those who protect our freedom. In the Kelly household it is also a weekend of lake fun mixed in with the annual Art of Motion show.

Friday night we dropped Brenden off with grandma Connie and Lu-Lu (aka: Grace, Connie's mom and Brenden's great grandma) and headed to Bartlesville for dress rehearsal. I guess I forgot to tell Tim that when we were married he signed an invisible, yet binding, document to help backstage with any dance studio function. He didn't complain, but I'm sure he would have rather been fishing. :) Rehearsal ran smoothly, only a few minor bumps, (Thank you Jamie for showing up and getting me off the hook for stage managing! WHEW!) and we headed back to the lake.

The next morning I slept in while Mike and Tim fished. Well, they attempted to fish. That round proved to be unsuccessful. Connie had taken Brenden and Grace back to the house (they are only about 10 minutes from the campsite) for the night and they showed back up on Saturday around 9 am. While Connie cooked breakfast Tim and I took Brenden out on the boat. Last year he wasn't mobile so he was very content to sit on our laps and watch the water. This year he wanted to steer, push buttons, and grab at the water. It was still fun, just a lot more challenging.


That afternoon Tim and Mike actually caught something (5 fish to be exact) while Connie, Grace and I lounged around near the camper and Brenden napped. The weather was extremely nice, not too hot and very sunny. I eventually realized we forgot Brenden's pool so I thought I'd be smart and improvise with a plastic bin. It worked out well, until Tim decided to dump most of the water on me. He ended up soaked as well, and Brenden squealed and laughed. He used the squishy baseballs and football that his grandma had bought to soak our audience as well. I never knew an evil look could be so darn cute!

Coming to get us!!!

Eventually we headed back to Bartlesville (after showers of course, can't smell like the lake!) to start the show. It was fabulous! The girls were all well behaved and did a wonderful job. Carrie and Jenna, the seniors, made me cry with their solos and I made it across the stage to hand Shelly her flowers without falling down. All in all, a complete success! We couldn't stick around for long, the gate to the campground closed at 10 pm. By 9:55 pm we were almost there when we hit a road block that didn't look much like a road block. We thought the police had pulled over a truck full of kids and almost got in trouble by driving past before they flagged us down. They checked our licenses, made sure we didn't have beer, checked our out of date insurance (Oops! They didn't notice! We had one in date, we just handed them the wrong one.) and told us to have a nice night. Luckily we made it with only a minute or two to spare. Whew!

Backstage with Andi! :)

The next day my parents, Justin, Dan and Ginny came down for a cookout. Brenden was entertaining everyone, kicking a beach ball, making everyone pull him in the wagon, and showing off his new sentences. Suddenly, Tim and I both gasped as he tried to climb on the bench next to the picnic table, which is made of concrete, and he slipped. At first I thought he had just scratched his lip, but when we finally got a closer look there were teeth marks and what looked like a flap of skin under his lip where he bit through it. As usual, it's not a Kelly holiday unless some one's at the ER or gets hurt. We headed into Bailey Medical Center (We looove them! They took great care of Tim, too!) In 15 minutes we were chatting with a doctor, who explained that Brenden did bite his lip, but his teeth glanced off the top and then bit under his lip, not through it. He reassured us, several times, that it would probably scar but that Brenden would grow out of it. Scars don't scare me. As a boy I know Brenden will have his fair share. I was more worried that he needed stitches. The doctor assured us that he was fine without them. It only took about 30 minutes in all, 5 of which was Brenden charming the nurses into giving him crackers and juice. :) We made it back in one piece and eventually had our cookout, which was interrupted by a quick storm that sent us running. Eleven people in one, medium sized camper? We were very chummy!

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. We went on a few more boat rides, I perfected my sunburn, and we had a great time with our family.

We hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, minus the ER visits of course!

Happy Memorial Day!!!