Happy birthday to my Auntie

My Aunt Etta turns 70 this very day, Happy Birthday to you Etta. In fact this year not only is she celebrating 70 years of life but her and her husband Roger celebrated 50 years of marriage. Quite the year for the couple. This is a picture of Roger, Etta and their two daughters at the 50th anniversary party this past summer. Shelly is on the left and is my computer illiterate cousin. HOWEVER she is actually able to access this blog and does make comments on it so pretty impressive I say. Sharon is on the right and NEVER reads her email (something that I always give her grief about).

My mom and Etta were quite close as sisters. In fact, the two traveled with David and I to warm destinations in the winter for a number of years. Many many memories were made on these trips.

Our first trip as a foursome was to our favorite little island Isla Mujeres. Mom and Etta spent a week with us (David and I were there 10 days). They disliked leaving so much that they never ever spent only a week again, it was 10 days from then on. Below is a picture of the first of many trips, mom and Etta were leaving to go home after their week was up.

David and I took these two ladies to destinations such as Zihuatinajo (sp?), Ambergris Caye in Belize and of course back again and again to Isla Mujeres. Etta always wondered what David and I wanted with those two older ladies along on our vacations.....my oh my you just couldn't beat the fun that we had! Our very first trip out we spent the night in a hotel as our plane left at 6am the next morning. We shared a room, David and I in one bed and Etta and mom in the other. Poor David got no sleep as Etta and mom (and I) giggled the entire night. I looked over at one point to see mom holding something that she had picked up from the night stand in front of her face trying to read it....IN THE DARK. First of all, my mom was not a reader and second her vision was certainly not good enough to read in the dark. The two were just like kids excited to go on their first vacation.

While in Belize we rented a golf cart to explore the island. We had driven down some path or another quite a long way. The damned cart gave out on us and we ended up pushing it for a bit of course giggling and laughing the entire time.

Most of our vacation time was spent laying in the sun, eating or playing cards. Poor Etta got so tired of loosing to my husband that she quit playing with him AND came up with a very good nickname for him. OK so it's my blog I can say what I want right...she dubbed him 'peckerhead' because she was so frustrated with loosing to him.

Before my mom passed Etta and her went on a sister's only vacation to the Black Hills. It was a memorable trip for both I am sure. They took my cousin Sharon's cell phone along in case they had car problems etc. Now, neither of these two ladies had ever used a cell phone before and had no clue how they worked. Since Etta was the driver it was mom's responsibility to take care of the cell phone. The thing would ring and of course mom couldn't hear it (not only were her eyes bad but the hearing was as well!!!) so Etta had to tell her that it was ringing and then mom would have to dig in her purse to try to find the thing. IF they would get the phone answered before it went into voice mail all one could hear was the two of them giggling.

So, happy birthday to you my dear Aunt. May you have many many more.