My Wife Went To Panama City For Spring Break And All I Got Was A Shirt!

The conquering heroine comes back to San Jose Airport. Her plane ride was alright, and did not land on any strange islands with smoke monsters.

The kids ran over to greet her.

Every angle must be photographed!

Come on Delta, It was only one flight, and you still manage to get a tear on the bag? This was a carry-on bag, but on the small plane from Atlanta to Panama City and back, they do have to put bags in cargo. They managed to put this on her bag.

Now for the fun stuff! A Shirt.

A nice cool hat.

A shell covered box.

Another shirt...

Here is the shirt I got.

I did get a visit from someone in Southern California, so I guess that counts for something. Plus, it's a Kramer sighting, and it just might have been a real one, too! Don't remember that light green shirt, though.

Kramer Sighting! Florida Mom Edition

As has been well established by now, I travelled to Florida a couple of months ago. Could it be, did I finally find a Kramer?


Let's see, long, dark hair...

looking at facebook...

Hmm...these aren't the glasses I remember Teresa wearing. It can't be her. Astonishing resemblance, though.

Top Secret Florida Trip!

Well, I finally made it out to Florida to visit most of the Kramers, minus Eddie. So how was the first day? It rained the entire first day, so all we did was just hang around and talk. Oh, and one of the children beat me at the game of Clue. Morning came and night came, the first day.

Here are loading up the Huge white Van with all the kids, and heading off to the beach.

Their nice, big, beautiful house in Florida.

Nothing says, "You're in the South!" like a Waffle and Omelet House. I tried to convince my hostess to go to one, but was advised against it. I did get treated to Chick-fil-et (or however you spell it) twice, however.

Finally on the beach. Calm, clear water all around, no crashing waves. A good deal warmer than California beaches.

The best thing about going to the beach? Chips!

Kids at play on the beach. Insert your own Neville Shutte joke here.

Lots of big cargo ships passing by.

The infamous Potty Skittles.

Club La Vela. You can't see it very well, but there is a sign that is cut off on the right that said, "PARTY WITH THOUSANDS!." Why was it cut off? I got to go on a tour of the Bay in Panama City on what was called a Sea Screamer, a really fast boat. Ostensibly it was to see Dolphins in the bay, and there were quite a few of them. However, they were pretty fast, and was not able to get pictures of them. Panama City is known as a Spring Break destination, although it was starting to wind down by the time I got there.

Juan wants to come here next year and party with thousands.

Here is a picture of someone else doing something exciting.

New Pier being built in Panama City.

So of course every one has to wave at the construction workers. Neat thing about the boat tour, the driver let all the kids on board have a turn at driving the boat.

Margaret pulling a towel over her head. She looks like a cute little Russian Babushka.

Cupcakes! We had a Tea Party after Mass on Sunday, so some food was prepared.

The table was arranged with care, in hopes that Saint Ni.... Oops.

Here are some of the kids enjoying the Tea Party.

The next day we went out to this State Park that used to be the summer recreation spot of an Alabama Textile Company. and it was gorgeous, with clear blue water, charming little cottages, swooping dunes, and a big lagoon. And if my camera had not died, you would be seeing pictures of Camp Helen State Park. Hey, Kramers, do you have any pictures?

And so after a yummy pot roast dinner, my last day with the Kramers ended. The next day it was back home to California, where my family and huge piles of laundry awaited me. Hey, at least they were able to feed themselves. Barely.

You Flew In On That Thing? You're Braver Than I Thought...

As many of you know, I went to Florida a couple of months ago to visit Teresa Kramer, and ostensibly to help her out while Eddie was out here on the west coast. What follows in the next 50 posts is an excruciatingly detailed account of that trip.

Checking in at San Jose. Actually, I was already checked in, but I wasn't sure if my bag was small enough to carry on. My flight attendant, Kenny Rogers, assured me that it was.

Stage one: San Jose to Phoenix.

The family watches the plane take off from a near by parking lot. You can see a tiny little dot that is my plane. Afterwards, the rest of the family went to Fry's to check out the electronics. Meanwhile, on the plane, I was looking at the rest of my fellow passengers, wondering who would be in charge when we crashed on the Island.

About two hours later I arrived in Phoenix. This was about all I saw of the city.

Another look at Phoenix.

Not my plane.

Here is my plane to Atlanta.

I flew into Phoenix on US Airways. But my connecting flight was on Delta. I discovered that I had to leave terminal 3, go outside, catch a shuttle bus to terminal 4, and go through security all over again. Yay!! So, the plan in the foreground is my plane to Atlanta. See that building way off in the distance? That's the terminal I arrived in.

A zoomed in photo from the same spot. That was my plane from San Jose. Why all the pictures of planes? I don't fly very often. It all seemed exciting at the time.

An exciting picture of a concourse from just about any airport you've ever been in. Again, it seemed exciting at the time.

It's not a good sign when you ask the flight attendant at your gate in Atlanta where your connecting flight is, and she looks at your ticket, and says "oh, you have to hurry!" I was told to go down an escalator roughly a mile away, go past the baggage claim, and take the train to concourse D. Yes, they have a train. I went and ran the whole way, and got to the gate to catch this plane just as they began boarding.

How did I have time to take this picture, if I was just in time to board, you might ask? Well, I actually got this picture after the plane took off, then circled back to Atlanta and landed again.

Turns out there was some sort of instrumentation problem on the plane, so we had to go back to Atlanta. So during the 45 minutes it took them to get us a new plane, I had plenty of time to take pictures of it.

And here is the NOT broken plane they put us on. It was a tiny little plane that held about thirty or forty passengers. It was the last flight to Panama City out of Atlanta. It was getting late, and all the restaurants in the airport were closing. A few hungry, irritable passengers tried to talk the guy at the Burger King/Cinnabon stand into selling them something, but he was adamant that he couldn't re-open. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait too long to get on the new plane.

And so, at about midnight I arrived in Panama City. No, Panama City is not in Alaska, this picture was actually taken the morning I left for home. It's the only picture I had of that airport. Once I arrived, I found a friendly, extremely southern taxi driver who had no idea where the street the Kramers lived on was located, and did not know what happened to his map. His dispatcher didn't know either. So I had to call Teresa, and repeat her directions to the cabbie. Several weeks later, we arrived at the Kramer home, where I was greeted with banana bread, and chocolate dipped strawberries and pretzels. Since my last meal had been at ten thirty in the morning, it felt like the best dinner I'd ever had.

Join us for my next post, when I eat breakfast and brush my teeth.

Kramer Sighting! Florida Edition

It's time for another edition of Kramer sighting!

This time, our roving correspondent went to the Sunshine State, where it only took her 12 hours to get to the Panhandle section, and one in flight scare out of Atlanta!

Let's go to the videotape!

This house certainly looks large enough to house all the Kramers. Plenty of room to do all their laundry and that of Fort Bragg combined. Pretty nice. there is even a HUGE WHITE BUS (yes, it is a bus according to its paperwork) parked in the front. Could this be them? Let's take a closer look....

The interior floor of this particular Bus certainly looks like it is used to haul kids around, and possibly may even be home to tropical amazon life. however, those kids in this particular Bus don't look anything like the Kramer children. They appear to be much too old to be the ones we knew in California. Plus there does not appear to be any boys around.

This Cutie Pie cannot possibly be the youngest Kramer! Although very cute, this young lady is much too big and has WAY too much curly hair to be the one we know. this young lady also seems to be walking very well, while the one we know was not walking too much way back in September.

Believability Rating: 37%. The problems with this sighting, even though this blog went to the expense of sending a correspondent all the way to Florida, here is what is wrong. first all, the house on second thought, does seem a little small to house all 132 Kramers.

Secondly, the children we did get pictures of are too different from the ones we remember. Lastly, the young lady we did get a picture of had really long curly hair, bangs, and was walking just too well to be the Cutie Pie we remember. Plus, no one whacked the correspondent in the knee, hobbling her for life.

So, the search continues, although the trip to Florida was not entirely fruitless. Our correspondent spent nearly a week in the Panhandle of Florida, in the Spring Break capital , and very nearly partied with thousands!

Tune in again sometime later on this week! There are reports Naval Officers have been spotted not just in California, but on the Central Coast, and even at Mission San Juan Bautista!!!

WE WILL FIND YOU, KRAMERS!

Happy 1st Birthday, Margaret!

Happy Birthday, Margaret!

Congratulations on reaching your first Birthday!

May you have lots of cake, presents you can chew on, and peaceful nights.

We can't be there for your birthday, but here is a virtual cake just for you (and several others)!

Happy 1st Birthday!