Happy 1st Birthday Everett!

While Ev was officially a big 1 on the third of November his parents were able to get everyone together on the 13th for a nice party. Hard to believe it has been a year since the wild ride from Bryan to the hospital in Dallas for the little preemie.

Unfortunately for this occasion the little guy had just gotten a pretty bad ear infection and wasn't feeling in the party mood but we felt he needed a bit of good cheer. With numerous professional photographers in the family I shot only a few of the 1,000 or so of the birthday boy. Here's the view of the paparazzi from his perspective ... goo goo gaa gaa ...

And the sufficiently destroyed dragon cake ... the last fork driven home by Ev himself.

After the dragon slaying he got a bunch of really neat gifts which he was in awe of and actually perked up a bit.

And he and grandmom after the little guy was plum tuckered out from all the partying and crashed in her lap ...

Cool little guy with a lot of livin' yet to do ... Happy First and many more!!

First, even though today is the 12th of November and little Ev's birthday was the 3rd,  we will celebrate it tomorrow the 13th as his mom and dad are shooting a wedding as I am writing this on a Saturday night.

On the 10th we packed up the Flying Scotsman at the Aggieland RV park. We took down all the deck stuff and packed it in the basement and headed for the Dallas area. We said bye to Mom and Dad and Richard and Kerry in the College Station area yet will return there for Thanksgiving Day dinner.

The Thursday drive up to the Dallas area was a gorgeous one with perfect blue sky and temps in the 60's throughout the three hour drive.

We are now unpacking in the Dallas Destiny RV Park which is really in the little town of Corinth about 20 miles north of Dallas and really a suburb of Denton on IH 35E north of town.



This appears to be a really nice park with all the amenities and a monthly rent of about $425 plus the electric. Right now we are planning on staying here until March, with the occasional side trip for fun, food and wine, of course.

PS, yes there is a set of bull horns hooked on the front of the RV to the rear of ours ... University of Texas football fan I guess.

Halloween 2011!

OK, grandkid picture time, but you gotta admit he's cute as a chicken.

Here's the boys as Everett and his bud Nick are hauled around the neighborhood on their first trick or treat adventure in a modern Radio Flyer.

AWWW ... OK grandpa get over it,eh.

And papa Brooks with the chicken man ... happy first Haloween for the little guy!

After the Department unveiling ceremony on the 28th we adjourned to the Cenare Italian Restaurant in College Station, our favorite place for a quiet setting and consistently excellent food. Here's Dad in his Dick Cheney pose for his 95th birthday celebration.



After the excellent Italian food it was time to adjourn to brother Richard's place for the cake and ice cream. Again here's Pop expounding on ... something.

All in all a really rewarding day and the 95 year old (hey, Mom is 93 as well) persevered as well or better than we youngsters ... !

Happy Birthday Dad!



October 28th was both Dad's birthday and the celebration of his contribution to Texas A & M University and the historic department they created. In the mid 60's these three guys came from Michigan State University with a dream and concept for scientific tourism design. Here's Dad flanked by Les Reed and Carson Watt the founders of this idea and the department that would follow.

They had a vision that there should be a department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Science somewhere and they had landed at Texas A&M here in College Station, Texas.

Earlier this summer the department had asked Dad to draw a new picture of the new building as the ones he had drawn over the years of previous department locations in older campus buildings were now literally history. He said OK and with the help of a photo from brother Richard knocked out the new building's drawing in a couple of weeks. Dad needed a human to scale the drawing and hence the very tiny likeness of him in the building's doorway ... if you look really closely.

This picture of and by the grand master will hang in the new facility along with many of his other works and is a tribute to his almost 50 years of dedicated service to make this one of the country's finest tourism education centers.

And the master himself describing the last 50 years of work and all the folks that had made this moment and facility a reality.