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| | October 20, 2004
More birthdays
by Ann Smith
I have several late October Birthdays that have been given to me to report.
October 8th was the birthday of a "one of a kind" person. Mrs. Dolores Hoffart celebrated her birthday with her husband and family at the Heritage House in Montgomery and was given gift certificates and movie videos along with many well wishes. This is a woman who has done so much for so many all through the years. She deserves all of our well wishes.
October 13th Frank Hubbard of Dobbin turned 70 years old.
October 14th Little B.J.Shields of Conroe, son of B.J. & Mattie Shields of Dobbin. I have known this young man since we moved to Dobbin and was happy to have run into him at a store in Conroe recently. He is one of those people that doesn't look older as the birthdays roll around.
October 15th was a busy day for birthdays in Dobbin. Jessie Lee Bates, a lifelong resident of Dobbin had his 76th birthday. Charles and Anthony Byrd, twin sons of Albert and Eva Byrd had their special day. Doretha Edwards, wife of Rev. John Edwards, and mother and grandmother and great grandmother of many celebrated her special day. She deserved a big celebration and I'm sure her family came through for her. Our late best wishes to all these local residents.
As I wrote last week, my brother, Humphrey Hughes, celebrates his special day on October 20, 2004. Our love and best wishes go his way. This past weekend my 7 sisters and I and one of our sistersinlaws, Linda, got together for a "Sisters Weekend" at the lakehouse in Willis belonging to our sister, Pat. Mary and I followed each other from Montgomery and met Pat at her lovely lakehouse. We visited and sat around looking at the lake and relaxing. Later in the evening Josie drove in with Winnie, Therese, Ginny and baby sister, Helen all in one vehicle. They all ate the BBQ and all the other food everyone brought while they were told about the two papers I had prepared for them to fill out. One paper had 15 family names and a place to describe each person. The other had 15 descriptions of family members and they had to quess who it best described. This may have been more than they really cared to do, but surprisingly everyone filled out both papers and as I read them all back there was a lot of extra comments and plenty of laughing. We laughed so hard we had tears streaming down. I had to catch my breath a couple of times and even had to turn the papers over to Mary to finish reading at times. It turned out to be a fun activity and we went on talking until early in the morning when we were winding down and everyone found a place to sleep. Waking up slowly in the morning we just lounged around and of course kept talking some more. Finally, we decided we better get the food out again and eat lunch then most had to pack up to get back to Houston and their families. Everyone agreed it was so good to all be able to get together at one time and hoped we may be able to do it again after the Holidays, maybe in January.
Pat gave each of us a climbing rose plant called "seven sisters" as a reminder of the weekend. I stayed on with Pat until Sunday morning. I drove from her lakehouse straight to St. Mary's Church in Plantersville where I met with my youngest daughter, Jacque, and daughterinlaw, Amy, and her three children, Sarah, Ty and Clayton and we attended 10:30 Mass together. I certainly did thank God for the lovely time I just had with my family and enjoyed having this part of my family with me in Church.
Now as I promised I will give you Part 1 of "The Cruise"
Monday, October 4th, 2004
My sister, Pat, and I had a lovely cruise together with the Carnival Cruise Line out of Galveston. It actually was the last trip out of Galveston for the ship we were on, the Celebration. It was a really big ship. We were on the Upper Deck 6. The trip for two was a gift to my sister, Pat, from her youngest daughter, Tricia and her husband, Wes, for Mother's Day and I was the lucky one to be her traveling companion. We were driven to Galveston by her second daughter, Chrissy, who is a very good freeway driver. I talked to her all the way there. She dropped us off with our luggage on wheels and we just walked right through everything with our luggage and right to our cabin. Pat had all the paperwork done ahead of time and we had our passports ready. We unpacked and found our way to the food, ate and back to our cabin to get the lifejackets and headed for "the drill". That was something everyone had to go through and I was sure hoping we would never have to use them. Thank God, we didn't.
We took the wrong turn twice going back to the cabin. It sure is easy to get turned around on the big ship. Back in our rooms we rested for a while and then went out and found the gift shop to buy postcards and look around. Pat bought a cute watch for $10 because we both forgot our watches. We were assigned to the late dinner (8:30 pm) which we attended but requested to be switched to the early (6:30pm) for the rest of the trip. We enjoyed our first dinner with our companions with my sister, Pat, drawing everyone into conversation. She used to be in charge of setting up dinners where she worked and it was her job to get everyone into a comfortable conversation. She really knows how to accomplish that. Then I had to tell everyone we wouldn't be back the next night. I think they were disappointed. As we are both in our early 60's and not party animals, we both were ready to return to the cabin after dinner. We relaxed and I wrote out postcards (which have not been delivered yet) then we read and had an early night.
Tuesday October 5th, 2004
I woke up about 7:30 am. My sister didn't sleep too well during the night as she was already having a problem with her shoulder before we came on the ship. We ate a late breakfast and decided she should try to see the ship doctor so all her nights wouldn't be like that. The nurse listened to her and suggested she come back at 3 pm and see the doctor, which we did. He was a good looking young man and she told him he should be in the movies. He is from Greece and was a little embarrassed, but handled it well. He questioned her and decided she should keep doing what she was doing but gave her something stronger for night. We took pictures with him to have proof when we would get back and tell them about the Greek God. That was a fun trip to the doctor.
There is one section on the boat that if you get on the wrong elevator you are on a floor where you cannot go all the way to the other end of the boat. I walked up and down stairs, got in the elevator and still could not get where I wanted to be. Finally, I gave up and went back to the room. It happened more than once. Very strange!! There are 3 sections of elevators on the ship and that one section messed me up every time. Oh well.
Our first early dinner we met two new couples and one lovely Chinese family of 3. The son, Stephen, was 9 yrs old and quite the nice young man. He ordered his own dinner from the big menu every evening. They told us he is a very good student and a very good soccer player. I enjoyed sitting next to him. His mother was sea sick and had to leave the table 3 different times. We told them about our visit to the doctor and seeing they had free sea sick pills right there on the door for the taking. Her husband left the table and when he returned he had the pills for her. She was fine the next night.
The boat was really rocky. Everyone had told me I wouldn't even feel any movement. I just do believe the ocean was still reacting to all the storms we had beforehand. I did not feel sick at anytime, but you really had to be careful walking around, some times it was more than other times. It did not keep us from enjoying the trip. There were some people that looked like they were having trouble, we felt sorry for them. The night was stormy and we could see the lightning out of our big window and the white caps on the water. We slept good that night.
That's it for this week. More on "the cruise" next week. See you then.
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