The Mantooths: Lots going on!

Lots of stuff has happened since the last blog so I will try to go in sequence...have patience - it is going to be a long one!

We had our first baby shower! Thanks to Bo's Mom, my Mom, Uncle Ed, Aunt Patti, two wonderful friends, Amy and Lauren, we had a very successful baby shower back home. Thanks also to Laurel Ann for letting us use her Sunday Place for the venue. There was a great turn out and we received lots of wonderful things!

Opening the gifts was fun!

Betsy was really cute!

The aftermath - Grannie and I were both exhausted!

Jack wasn't at the shower so he gave me and Knox some love when we got home.

It was an eventful weekend because the very next day was the McCroy Family Reunion. Every year on the first Sunday in August all the family gets together to celebrate. We had a great time! We finished off Sunday and our weekend by having dinner with 4 other couples from back home that we miss very much!

The guys that in charge of the chicken - Granddad and Burt are in charge of saucing then Bo and Jacob handle the turning.

Betsy and Jack had a good time!

GiGi and Porter played some once we got home.

Betsy and Jack wanted to hear a story from Grannie.

The next weekend I had to take a work trip to Cleveland, Ohio so boy made a trip to Memphis to see the boys. I left work about lunch on Thursday with a co-worker headed for the airport. Neither of us are airport veterans (I just follow Bo's lead when we travel together) so we thought that we would leave plenty of time for mistakes. We arrive at the airport to find out the flight had been delayed but happy that it was only 30 minutes! We go ahead and get through security, pick up lunch and arrive at the gate with more than 2 hours left before the flight. We are at the end of C terminal with 10 other gates all making announcements - two flights had overbooked so every 3 minutes one of them would make an announcement enticing passengers to give up their seats (at one point they were offering $400 in Delta dollars and dinner vouchers to wait until 10:00 that night). Our original take off time was 3:00 then delayed to 3:30 when we checked in so about 2:55 I started getting worried that they weren't making any announcements at our gate so I got up to check the board...Cleveland, OH - Closed. Ummm...what does that mean? Did they cancel the flight; no, it would say canceled like the others. Oh wait, it looks like they changed the gate! I walk back to Hannah and sadly declare that I think we have missed our flight. We walk down to the gate and sure enough they had just closed the door, therefore, were not letting any other passengers on - not like they we would have a seat since they gave them to stand bys. To make a long story short (well, shorter) we went to the desk and got confirmed for the last flight of the night (9:50) and were on standby for the two before then (5:15 and 7:15). We waited and when the 5:15 flight came around they let two standbys on - not us. We had dinner and waited for 7:15. We knew we were first in line for standbys so it was looking good! Yah, we made it on the 7:15 flight, BUT they grounded all flights and we still didn't take off until after 11:00! Got to Cleveland and picked up the rental car then drove to the hotel (which looked like it was from The Shining) and got into the room after 2:00 am. Yowza, I had to be up and at breakfast by 8?!? The rest of the weekend was a little better. I got to go to Progressive Field to watch the Indians versus the Twins, which ended in a walk-off homerun. I saw T.O. and Ochocinco and the rest of the Bengals at the hotel and the conference went well, but no sign of LBJ - I wanted to give him a high five! I was ready to head home on Sunday, so much so that I carried my bags down 6 flights of stairs since the hotel had locked all but one elevator for the Bengals! Bo's trip was pretty uninteresting comparatively!