BOXES 230-231: Sheboygan, W.B., Orlando.

When Anne and I got back from our summer 2001 trip to Italy we were eager to see Forest, our new grandson, Aron and Tiffany's second child, born while we were abroad. Here he is, with his older brother, Sam, This post will be nearly all family photos, the only travel pics being of the days Anne and I spent in Orlando, Florida that December.

Aron and Tiffany had moved to West Bend, WI, where Aron was working for the Fire Department. The first pictures in today's slide box are of Anne with the boys at their house:

Most of our pics of Forest show him sleeping, naturally enough:

. . . though we did get one of him awake in his bath:

One day we all had a picnic at a lake--I'm not sure which:

Forest, of course, mostly slept while Sam, nearly two years old, was more active:

Back at our house Becky posed with Sam and Forest separately and together:

And Sam and Forest posed with each other:

I like this pic of Sam on our couch:

Back in West Bend there seems to have been a block party of some sort on Aron and Tiffany's street, since there were tables set up and Tiffany and Sam took part in a fire hose demonstration. That's Tiffany's brother Richie sitting with Sam at a table, and I see that Becky and Michelle were there tooI'm especially:

Back in Sheboygan again, here's Sam sitting with a couple of little girls--I'm pretty sure they were our nextdoor neighbors.

We used to have dinner on our back patio when we had company. Here are Aron and Tiffany with, I think, Becky on the left, plus Michelle and a Madison friend on the right.

I'm especially happy with the way a group of slides of the family on the swing turned out:

In December of that year, because of 9/11, Americans weren't traveling as much as usual. Anne and I did want to spend Christmas with Jim and Dottie, my brother and sister-in-law, who had settled fulltime in their house in Palm Beach Gardens. Anne found a bargain package for Orlando that included airfare plus hotel, free entrance to Universal Studios and their rides, plus (if I remember correctly) a day pass to either Disney World or Epcot. So we flew to Orlando and after a couple of days' stay drove to Jim and Dottie's, 2+ hours to the south. I'm disappointed now to see that I took no photos of Christmas at their place that year, or of our friend Mary Ann and her family, with whom we spent time as well. But for the record, here are the Orlando photos.

Our hotel room was more of a little apartment with kitchen, though we didn't make much use of the latter:

Even before checking out the Orlando attractions we drove to the ocean--just to see it and walk on the beach--and saw a great egret along the way (hardly an unusual sight in Florida). Here are the (pretty ordinary) photos:

Anne and I posed for each other on the beach:

At Universal CityWalk we had lunch at Emeril's Cajun restaurant. Some of you may remember that he was quite a celebrity at that time, and his place (a branch of his New Orleans restaurant) was crowded, but we were offered a seat at the bar looking into the kitchen. You can see Anne in both shots below:

That sort of open kitchen wasn't so common in 2001, and it was fun to watch the cooks. Here's a view of them at work and of our entrees (whatever they were):

We may have stopped at Margaritaville (seen on the left below) but in any case enjoyed strolling through the fake Manhattan in CityWalk:

There were some live musical performances, such as the Blues Brothers impersonators below, and we were glad to see the warm-weather Christmas decorations:

But I have no idea why I bothered to take three photos of the 'Blues Brothers' as they drove away in their police car. As for the sign for the KittyKat Club, I don't recall entering the establishment.

We went on some of the Universal rides--I recall the Twister one, but not the boat ride pictured below. I have no idea what movie it represented--maybe I did have a margarita--but I see from the slides that it had an explosion and a pleasant-looking guide:

At one point we passed by Mel's Cafe and watched the performers. Again, I don't remember how Anne happened to pose with the performers:

We took more pics of each other, Anne in a cartoon car and me next to a Curious George fountain. I guess we really must have had margaritas.

That evening we saw a Cirque du Soleil show at Downtown Disney (thrilling--our first time seeing them other than on TV--but no pics), and went to Epcot the next day. The only photo I have from there is one of Anne at a cafe in the 'French' village:

Back home Anne's mother came to visit--she was going to join us on our campus trip to Siena in early January. Aron and family came up to Sheboygan: here they are reading a book called Just Me and My Little Brother:

And here I am with Forest pretending to read a book about Petrarch. I see that by this time we had had our kitchen renovated:

And finally here is Aron posing separately with Sam and Forest:

Those pics are the last on the slide roll and thus the last of 8 boxes of slides taken in 2001--more than any year since 1984. In my next post I'll show the first days of our 2002 campus trip to Tuscany.