A Shade of Gray: The Wild, Wild Weekend That Was

Sorry for the delay in posts. Trust me, I'm the proudest father in the world, and I'm pretty sure I have a justified excuse. Going into this weekend we expected to be busy. We were expecting company on Friday night and a couple more sets of guests on Saturday. Those things happened, but the events that followed added a bit more excitement to our weekend.

Friday night our friends Stephen and Sherry Beauchamp came all the way from Commerce to see Graylon. They brought his own personalized burp cloth. It was green with polka dots on it. It had also been embroidered with his name. Once they got here, they never put Graylon down. Of course they told us that we could have him back if we wanted. They are just very fond of babies and particularly fond of our son. It was great to have them visit.

On Saturday, Athens hosted its annual bicycle race downtown. It's an all day affair of food, fun, and festivities in the Classic City. This was the first year Heather and I haven't attended in close to six years. The race brought more of our friends into town who had to take advantage of the opportunity to come see our new addition. Arriving first was our friend and former Lady Bulldog, Katie Frye. She brought us lunch in the form of awesome chicken salad from Five Points Deli. She also came with a gift for Graylon. It was an all white Polo outfit that will fit Gray later this summer. She was so thoughtful, and it was good to see her. Our next visitors were the Payne's. They accompany us every Saturday in the fall for football games, and are usually with us every bike race weekend, so it was good to see them too. They also did not come without a gift. They brought us a variety of baked sweet goodness from a local bakery in town. Red velvet cake doughnuts, cheesecake squares, and pumpkin bread were among the goodies given to us. Thank you guys as well...they were delicious. Graylon was yet again a very gracious host, and showed them all what it meant to be a good boy.

Once our visitors headed downtown for the bike race our weekend received a nasty Zambranoesque curve ball. We noticed the living room felt a little warm around four o'clock or so. We just thought that since visitors had been in and out that it was because of that. We then noticed that the air coming out of our vents wasn't that cold. We chalked it up to A/C failure, but it was Saturday evening, so we were going to opt for service on Monday. As the evening wore on, however, it got hot. We popped windows and wore light clothing. Gray rocked out in just his diaper. None of these things were making it too bearable. And then it became abundantly clear that Graylon couldn't take the heat. If it were still just Heather and I, I think we would have just suffered through it, but we let Graylon tell us to take cover. So around just before midnight we thought we'd take a trip to Canton, Georgia. Our friend Jon Lane insisted we come to his house. My brother Rick, my dad, and future brother-in-law Jason were over there late so we left at 12:15 am to arrive around 2:00 am Sunday morning. Graylon got to spend his first night in a place other than home or the hospital. Thank you for your short noticed hospitality Jon and Ashley.

We spent the Sunday visiting with everyone, watching the Chicago Bulls, eating Mexican food, and just hanging out. Cousins Averie Raye and Graylon got in some good bonding time, and Aunt Kelly and Uncle Rick were excellent Sunday night hosts. Thank you guys we really appreciated it. It was a nice impromptu getaway weekend. Today we woke up and found a repair man to meet us at the house around 4:30 and he had it fixed in under an hour. Whew! We are now all resting comfortably after a Graylon bath. We've watched a movie, ate dinner, and caught our collective breaths. I got pictures from the weekend below. Thanks for reading this novel, but I had a lot to catch you all up on. We're preparing this week for an extended weekend in Dalton coming up. We are really looking forward to showing Graylon where we grew up and seeing all our friends in family in the D-Town.