...and on Thursday...
by Rob

Thursday was consistent with the rest of our vacation so far. The weather continues to be hot and mostly sunny. It seems that there was less time spent in the ocean yesterday; however, the pool still got a lot of use. In the afternoon, there were outings. The girl cousins headed out to shopping. The boy cousins played nine holes of golf at one of Uncle Rick's courses. Later in the afternoon, Michael, Debbie and Barb hit the outlet stores.

I can't say much about the shopping outings, although Abbie tried to freak me out when she came home wearing magnetic earrings that she tried to pass off as piercings. I couldn't quite believe that she had the fearlessness to defy us and get her ears pierced, but for a brief moment I was panicked by the thought that she might actually have that much nerve.

The golf outing was great. Both Michael and I went along with Rick to help the boys, and see the course and it's surroundings. Garrett's obviously been at this awhile and it was fun to watch him. He took coaching from Uncle Rick and his dad well, and would also use some of his own devices like laying his club on the ground and pointing it in the direction of his shot before placing his feet. Every so often when his shot was particularly strong or well placed, he would give his dad a high-five.

Nate also handled things well. He appreciated the coaching that he received from Uncle Rick and Uncle Mike. So did I. If he was successful at employing the input he was getting, he would comment about it after the shot, "Now I get it." Even though he took a lot of shots, he seemed to understand that this was a great opportunity to learn some things and a very nice place to be golfing. At one point, as we were driving between holes he said to me, "So Uncle Rick gets paid to do this. That's so cool. I want to do this."

The course and the resort are clearly more high-end than anything that I have experienced before. It was great to see where Rick is working, but even more so, enjoyable to see his interactions with the staff and golfers at the course. Obviously, they all know who he is, but they also clearly respect him. I was impressed by his manner of greeting and interacting with all of the people that we encountered.

After dinner, Rick's meal of barbecued chicken, most of us played "Apples to Apples." The game was loud and funny. It was especially fun to watch Garrett. He laughed and chattered through the whole event. We also decided that he had a devious, yet brilliant strategy for playing the game. After the red cards were announced, he would often remark about one of them in a way that led us all to assume that it was his card. He did this three times about someone else's card, before we all started to suspect that he was intentionally playing us. Intended or not, it seemed like a brilliant way to throw off the judge.

Rick seemed to get the best assortment of ironic or humorous cards. I seem to remember that he had Bill Clinton, Democrats, and George W. Bush. He, of course, was very clever in his choice of adjectives that he associated with each of those cards. It was so funny at times, that there was little hope of concealing which card he had played.