Birthday Celebration

Tuesday, May 11th is our son, Stephen’s birthday. Birthdays are special in our family and it doesn’t matter how old or young you are… we celebrate. Since Stephen is now in the working world sometimes the celebrations have to be worked around his schedule. Because of that we began the fun on Friday. He arrived at the motorhome with Josh (our grand-dog) and his friend Whitney around 12:30 and we went directly to San Marcos for lunch.We seem to always arrive at San Marcos for special occasions…birthdays, graduations, jobs, promotions. They serve excellent Mexican food with sizable portions and great prices. We ate, talked, laughed and had a good time together.

 
From here we proceeded to Callaway Gardens Resort. We allowed Stephen the honor of deciding where he wanted to go and explore. He chose The Discovery Center for starters. We walked through the center and looked at several of the exhibits, browsed the gift shop and walked over the bridge to the area where the Birds of Prey show is held. Not today….we couldn’t even find a show time so we assumed they do these shows only during the weekends. We did stop on the bridge and watch the turtles begging for food morsels to be tossed to them. There must have been three dozen both large and small. We had never seen so many in one spot like that before.

We walked the path past the Bike Barn. This was Stephen’s first job- an after school and summer job renting bikes to Callaway customers. It was here he learned a great deal about customer service that he was able to take with him to his after college career. Great beginnings.

From here we went to the John A Sibley Horticulture Center. It is here that native and exotic plants are grown and displayed among rock walls. There is a sculpture garden, a fern grotto, conservatory and an outdoor garden display. They display plants seasonally and we got to see many of the spring annuals and perennials. We also found one of the nonpoisonous snakes that they release in order to take care of the rodents that might decide to visit the center. I can’t say I was really excited about seeing him!! We saw some extremely large fish swimming in the water pond. These were probably Koi that have been permanent residents at Callaway for several years... Old, slow and well feed.

We wanted to make a visit to Mr. Cason’s Vegetable Garden. When Mike worked at Callaway they allowed family members to take summer Discovery Classes. It was here Stephen fell in love with the vegetable garden. Mike and I visited this area a few weeks ago and it was interesting to see what a few weeks of warm weather can do to a garden. Things were beginning to shape up and the vegetable garden was beginning to grow. Stephen enjoyed telling us all he learned while taking classes here.
After returning to the motorhome we grilled some brats and enjoyed a light snack before enjoying Stephen’s choice for his birthday cake. It is called Chocolate Ganache Cake and it is provided compliments of Publix. Oh my goodness!!! It was delicious!!
We built a fire and then walked to the pool and hot tub. Stephen and Whitney enjoyed a swim and Mike and I dangled our feet. The fire felt good when we returned to the motorhome. It felt so good Mike and I enjoyed a nice quiet fire until around 12:30 a.m. We relaxed in our lounge chairs under the stars enjoying the fire knowing it had been another really wonderful day.