Birthday Celebration (October 2025)
Tammie at Lake Bob Sandlin in Pittsburg, Texas (2025)
Happy birthday to my beautiful wife. I first met Tammie when she was a 16-year-old freshman, and I was an 18-year-old sophomore at Bob Jones University. Over her four-year college career, we started as acquaintances, then became friends, then best friends, and finally fell in love. She has been an amazing wife, an outstanding mother, and the world’s best Gigi. We have shared a momentous life together filled with both great joy and deep sorrow. She is my rock, my soulmate, my best friend, my lover, and my partner in crime. And every year she gets more beautiful.
In the last few years as we have learned to dance, one of our favorite slow songs to dance to is Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud. I think it has become our theme song:
When your legs don't work like they used to before
And I can't sweep you off of your feet
Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love?
Will your eyes still smile from your cheeks?
And, darling, I will
Be loving you 'til we're 70
And, baby, my heart
Could still fall as hard at 23
……………………………………
When my hair's all but gone and my memory fades
And the crowds don't remember my name
When my hands don't play the strings the same way,
I know you will still love me the same
'Cause, honey, your soul
Could never grow old, it's evergreen
And, baby, your smile's
Forever in my mind and memory
………………………………………..
That, baby, now
Take me into your loving arms
Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars
Place your head on my beating heart
I'm thinking out loud
Oh, baby, we found love right where we are
And we found love right where we are
Birthday Activities
The day before my wife’s birthday we picked up all three grandchildren and took them to dinner at IHOP. After eating we returned home with them for cake and ice cream. They gave Gigi a card and each of them presented her with different color t shirts like the one pictured below.
On her actual birthday, we started the day driving 34 miles to Hendersonville, North Carolina to visit our favorite breakfast restaurant, Kostas Fireside Restaurant and Pancake Inn. I’m not sure what they do to their blueberry pancakes, but they are delicious.
After breakfast we drove back to Greenville for a hike at Paris Mountain State Park. The mountain can be seen from our back deck and is less than three miles from our house as the crow flies but just over five miles by car. Our daughter joined us for a four-mile hike on the Sulphur Springs Trail. It was a challenging hike with a 700-foot elevation change. The temperature was in the low 50s when we started but after about an hour, we were shedding jackets and hoodies. It was a beautiful fall morning and took us about 2 hours to complete the hike.
We then drove over to Culver’s for lunch. Their ice cream of the day was Turtle Cheescake. Yes, it was as delicious as it sounds.
Back home we rested for a while and then decided to practice our dancing for an hour. We decided to dance at least once to each of the dance’s we have learned. We started with a slow rumba, then the hustle, bachata, single step swing, and foxy. We aren’t the greatest dancers in the world, but we’ve enjoyed learning and practicing what we have been taught by Ballroom Feed.
We ended my wife’s birthday by going to dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse. While the steak is good, the real reason we came here was for the dessert. There isn’t much better than their Chocolate Stampede.
