Slate's birthday! When I first saw Slate that day...
...I said, "Good morning, Charlie Brown - have you seen Slate?" Which amused Slate greatly.
One interesting thing about Slate is that, due to his being the only child of two highly intelligent parents, one of whom is from England, he sometimes has speech patterns of an older child. Case in point: when Terry told him "Happy Birthday," he responded "Please don't say that to me at the moment, because we're not celebrating it yet, because not everybody's here."
That afternoon, Richard took Terry to lunch (where they no doubt commiserated about the trials of marrying into the Almy family), while Katherine, Slate, Mom, Dad and I went to a Humboldt Crabs baseball game. They're a semi-pro team that plays in Arcata. Today's game was against the Nevada Bighorns. This was a lot of fun - a small stadium, bleacher seats, a band whose enthusiasm outweighed their musicianship, loyal fans, and a local team with ties to the community. In other words, what baseball used to be.
Here are some pictures of the game:
...a picture of the Crabs dugout:
...and some pictures of the Crab Grass Band:
I was interested to notice that the Nevada Bighorns pitcher often pitched underhand:
At the 7th inning stretch, the band came and lined up along the fence, and led everyone in a spirited rendition of Take Me Out To The Ball Game:
The Crabs won, and by a rather overwhelming margin:
...whereupon everyone was invited onto the field to run the bases and high-five all the Crabs, an event in which Dad, Slate and I participated:
During the first few innings, Katherine kept reminding Slate to listen carefully to the game announcer's announcements. When I asked her why, she told me that there was going to be a SPECIAL announcement. I got the point, and shut up. Sure enough, somewhere around mid-game the announcer informed everyone that Slate Taylor was in attendance, and it was his sixth birthday! Alas, Slate was more embarrassed than pleased.
And before we leave the game, we must have pictures of:
Slate the Crabs Fan
North the Crabs Fan
After the game, Richard drove us out to the airport to pick up our rental car. And there we ran into a snag. The guy at the counter asked where we planned to go. Innocently enough, I answered that we planned to drive to Portland, about 400 miles away. That's when the guy dropped the bombshell - they don't allow their cars to go out of the local area. Something about too much mileage driving down the cars' resale values.
So I went to the other rental counters at the airport (all two of them). No cars available. I called another rental agency in Eureka. Closed. By this time, I was really angry. I stormed over to the guy at the rental counter and started getting up in his face about how this was ridiculous, I had a reservation.... he threw up his hands and said "I'll do it!"
So of course, I calmed down. I even told the guy I hoped he didn't get in trouble for doing this. He shrugged and said, "I don't care."
Back at the house, Slate opened his presents. Katherine had told us that Slate has recently discovered the Beatles, so we got him a CD of the White Album, and a DVD of Yellow Submarine. I put the CD in the stereo and played him the song "Birthday," which he appreciated.
Some pictures of Slate enjoying other birthday presents:
Building a tractor out of Legos
The (almost) finished product
Working on a 3-D dinosaur model
We then had Slate's birthday dinner. Slate himself planned the menu - hot dogs, pizza and baked potatoes (which Richard baked in a fireplace in the back yard). And birthday cake, of course. Oh, to be six again...