ALPHABE-THURSDAY-Mrs. Matlock, this assignment is too hard! @DayDreamnWorld

It's time again for ALPHABE-THURSDAY hosted by Jenny at Jenny Matlcok..."off on my tangent." This week's assignment was to find a word (or words) that begin with the letter K.

CLICK ON PHOTOGRAPHS TO ENLARGE.

Over the weekend the kids got out their Letter K Book and began to study. This was not an easy assignment for them. They wanted something special for the letter K and nothing satisfied them.



Finally, one of them had a brain storm. KEITH is always teasing about not appearing on his Mom's blog enough. KEITH is pretty special. KEITH starts with a K! Problem solved. So here it goes...

KEITH was born on May 31, 1969 at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Naples, Italy. He was our first born and we were living in Catania, Sicily at the time.

The hospital did not have a photographer come and take baby pictures, so I have no newborn pictures of KEITH. I was flown to the hospital on Thursday, May 29th because the doctor didn't think I would last until the scheduled Tuesday Medivac flight. He was correct. I went into labor on Saturday and KEITH was born a few hours later. Jim had flown up that day for the weekend and arrived at the hospital and was told that I was about to give birth. KEITH was born within twenty or thirty minutes of his arrival.

I know this sounds crazy now, but at that time there was a rumor going around that babies could incur damaged eye sight from a camera flash. Being a very diligent first time mother I limited the number of pictures that could be taken early on. We do have a few slides of KEITH taken within the first week or so, but I haven't gotten them scanned with my slide scanner yet. So, I'm using the earliest regular photographs that I could find.

This is KEITH at three months old. By this time we had moved from Catania and were living in base housing at the US Naval Air Facility at Sigonella, Sicily.



Like all proud parents we wanted a picture for the Christmas card. This is the one we took ourselves and used Christmas 1969.



This one was taken in November 1970 shortly after Troy was born.



I think this one was taken around the same time.



And since KEITH wanted a post about him I felt it was necessary to include the obligatory bathtub picture. That's KEITH on the left and Troy on the right. This was taken in May of 1971 shortly before Jim was discharged from the Navy and we returned to the states.



This was Halloween 1971. KEITH was Superman and Troy was a devil. By this time we were living in Parsippany, NJ.



This is KEITH's pre-school picture. If memory serves me correctly he went to the Paige School in Parsippany.



Here are KEITH and Troy in June of 1974. We were living in Virginia Beach, Virginia when this was taken.



This is KEITH's second grade school picture. I wish I could find a picture of KEITH holding a book under his arm. From 1st grade on he never went anywhere without a book. He loved to read. Even before he learned to read he'd follow us around begging us to read to him. "Somebody please read to me. I don't know how to read yet." Talk about a guilt trip. We read to him as often as we could, but it was never enough. He has always loved books. I thought for sure he'd be a librarian someday.



This is his fifth grade school picture. By then he was attending Kings Grant Elementary School in Virginia Beach.



KEITH was in his Junior year at Cypress Creek High School in Houston, Texas when this picture was taken.



And this was in 1993 and KEITH was teasing his brother by pretending to be him. At the time Reid was in high school. KEITH had already graduated from the University of Houston and was working for the state. He has always had a great sense of humor and whenever KEITH is around we're all usually laughing.



This was December of 2000. Years ago I made an Advent calendar and when the kids were young they used to argue over who would get to put the day's ornament on the tree. As they got older it became a joke. I still hang it up each year and to this day they try to beat each other to the calendar.



And this was on Tuesday as KEITH left to go home to Austin. Once a month he works for a day in Houston, so he comes on Saturday and leaves on Tuesday. His cats come too!



Here he is getting Mittens and Katie in the car. One thing I'm very proud of is that we managed to instill a love for animals in all our kids. Mittens was a cat I found and KEITH agreed to adopt and Katie was a cat Keith found.



KEITH loves living in Austin and has been there for a couple of years now. We still get to see him pretty regularly. He's been very supportive throughout Reid's illness. When he found out Reid was in intensive care he drove all the way to Houston for the day to see him. He calls often to find out how Reid is doing and to lend us moral support.

Yes, KEITH is definitely my favorite K word!