The Spring brought forth new life for our family. Carolyn, Ashleigh, and I were all comfortable gliding into our time together. Ashleigh’s 11th birthday came on Wednesday, March 21. Since this is smack dab in the middle of the week, I’m not sure if we celebrated early or late, but we allowed Ashleigh to have a gathering of her friends over for a slumber party. Like always, Carolyn went all out to make this a special party, decorating, and making two cakes.
One was the standard yellow cake with chocolate icing – Ashleigh’s favorite – and the other was a special concoction that Carolyn decided to tackle. We got the idea for it out of Penn & Teller’s How to Play With Your Food book. The cake was in the shape of an unassuming heart, but when you cut into it (with a butcher knife of course) it pierced an internal plastic bag filled with red Karo syrup, resembling blood of course. The effect was great and it tasted pretty good too!
Ashleigh opens gifts from her friends amidst the bloody remnants
Clockwise from Yaht are her friends Jamey, Melissa, Ashley, Courtney, and Sarah
The girls and their blood red tongues
Ashleigh demonstrates her new level of maturity
And it quickly spreads to the entire party
We also had a family party for her where we invited Christi’s side of the family, some of Carolyn’s family, and my family. Jill and Billy brought Briana by as well. Tensions were tight at that time between everyone as this was shortly after I had taken Ashleigh and Briana from Christi’s house. Billy and Jill then ended up taking Briana and were living nearby in Beavercreek. They had a separate party for her at Magic Castle which we attended as well.
Presents round two
Two more cakes – round two. I have absolutely no explanation as to why there are only ten candles on the cake…other than maybe we ran out of them!
Emma’s turn to operate
Carolyn cleans up the aftermath
Carolyn prepares a nice Springtime breakfast on the morning after Ashleigh’s party
Ashleigh does absolutely nothing to help
Easter came on April 15. We had the first of several Gelm family Easter Egg hunts – this time at Jeanette and Dustin’s house. I really enjoyed seeing all of the little kids on the hunt. At that time, we really didn’t have many little kids in the Murphy family yet so it was a treat to watch them all scamper about on the lawn searching for eggs. We had all mostly outgrown the fun of participating in an Easter Egg hunt in our family, so although we no doubt had one in some form at our family gathering at Bev and Ed’s house, I can’t remember it.
Bretton
Madi wastes no time
Kedric’s sacrificial egg offering
The Meyers on Easter
The men of Easter at Bev’s house: Dan, Bob, Bob, Me
Bev, Dan, Bob (hidden), Bob (visible), Carolyn, me, Brittney, Darlene
Ashleigh, Mom, and Bev. Jim peers from behind the piano.
May 7, 2001 finally saw the offical decree of divorce between Lisa and I finalized. It seems odd that it took this long for the paperwork to take this long to process. By this time, Lisa was already living in California, so obviously didn’t show up at the hearing. I had taken Carolyn with me to the courthouse in Xenia to sign off as a witness to the proceedings.
Later that month, I was called into Bruce’s office at work and was notified that I was being assigned to the Miamisburg store 759. This came as a bit of a shock out of nowhere. In fact, I was told to report the next day, Friday, May 25. So I said goodbye to all of the Fairborn store employees and my fellow co-managers at the time Dan Eyler, Shaleen, and Morley and trod off into the sunset.
My official Miamisburg Kroger portrait
I had mixed feelings – but overall I didn’t want to go. Whereas, the Fairborn store was two miles from my house, this was more like 25. But it ended up being a good experience that would eventually lead me to my current position with Kroger. Tim Quinlan was the store manager here and I worked for him for the next three years. One point of solace was that the Customer Service Manager in this store was Donna Lewchencko, whom I had worked with back in the mid 1990’s – and had initially promoted me to the front office.
I was still plugging away – albeit halfheartedly – with the A-Haunting We Will Go Tent. The lackadaisical approach continued to be to call the members up earlier in the week to announce the meeting, then slap a schedule together just (sometimes hours) before the meeting. We held the March meeting on the 25th at Charles’ house with a mixed bag of shorts from the various stars of the Roach Studios. The April 22nd meeting was held at my house and featured Our Relations. Apparently because of the turmoil of switching jobs (and probably laziness), it was the last meeting I would hold until July.
On the home front, we were certainly keeping busy in front of the television. I had discovered the magic of TV on DVD and it was drastically altering my life. Although Carolyn and I could seldom agree on what we thought was brilliant programming, we spent many hours during this time period watching M*A*S*H and Sex and the City.
The pictures tell a great story! What fun!
Amber
February 13th, 2008