July 4th with Family

Our day started early-- Dad and I had a tennis date at 7am with Pam Schwartz and her dad Al. Nice and early before the heat hits! Pam and I have been getting together occasionally to play tennis, and Dad was tha-rilled to hear that I was playing again! He went out and bought Matthew a racket, balls for me, ball holder for my hip and a racket/equipment bag for the court. Wow!

We had a great time with Pam and Al, playing out one set. Dad and I stayed to play a second set alone, and he just SMOKED me! He clearly had been holding back on us during the first set-- he decided to turn the heat on a bit with me, and I had NO chance of getting the ball back to him. When he was merciful we did manage to get in a few nice games, though.

After we finished playing and I was commenting on his fast serves, he reminded me that it wasn't that long ago that a morning like this couldn't have even been possible. He'd had alot of back trouble during the last year, even spending a significant amount of time confined to a wheelchair. He said that during that time, he'd thought many times that he would never be able to play tennis with his kids again. It made me understand his excitement even more-- it was such a blessing just to be out there on the court together!

The rest of our day was pretty low-key, and in the evening we watched some 4th of July programming on TV. As it got dark we went outside to burn off some sparklers, and then Jonathan, Dad and Matthew drove to town to watch the Vero Beach fireworks. Mom and I stayed back and watched more festivities on TV and kept Colson.

Here are some pictures of our evening. Sorry for the blurriness-- I didn't have a tripod set up.