The Belly Beans (Bryson and Sawyer)

Here is a great “father and son” picture of my boys in honor of Father’s Day.  What a super dad!

So for Father’s Day, Dave and I drove to Aiken to visit his parents this weekend.  I am always amused by the interesting restaurants we pass on our way to the All American city of Aiken, SC.  Take for example- “Off Da Chain Seafood & Mo”.  I bet they have good surf and turf specials!  Next door to that was the equally impressive “Sho Nuff Seafood”.  Yum yum- sho sounds good to me!  While the ebonic restaurants make me laugh, I have decided that intentional misspellings on store signs is one of my biggest pet peeves.  Take for example the local “KwiK Mart” or the “Dayz & Nites Convenience Store”.  The worst is the childcare place called “Kidz Korner”.  Seriously?  And we wonder why kids can’t spell!   

There are some equally amusing signs on the way to my folks house.  Last night I was tickled by the “Donor Kabobs” sign outside of a middle eastern restaurant.  That makes me wonder, who is the donor?  And a little further down the road there is the store that’s not quite Wal-mart…its the “WooMart”.  Haha!  But the all time winner is a sign for a doctors office on Hwy 29 called the Gwinnett Medical Association.  I kid you not, the sign says “Gwinnett Medical Ass.”  I wish I was making that up!  Clearly, their proof-reader was asleep at the wheel.

Anyway.  Back to Aiken.  As always, we had a nice visit with Dave’s parents.  Although Bryson decided to throw a little curve ball at us.  After being in his grandparents house for about 3 hours, Bryson’s face turned all splotchy red and started to swell.  At first I thought I was hallucinating- but pretty quickly it became apparent that he was having an allergic reaction.  Again.  It was so pitiful- his face wasn’t even recognizable.  His eyes were the worst- they were so puffy and purple, they were basically swollen shut!  Could life get anymore complicated?  Yes.  I know it could.  But poor Bee! 

After going around the entire house to make sure Bryson didn’t discover some secret stash of peanuts, we determined that the most likely culprit was the cats.  We no longer have any felines in our house, mainly because our “spirited” corgis just can’t behave around them. But Trish has 4 cats (3 of whom live inside) and they are all going through some serious spring shedding.  Even though she keeps the worlds cleanest house, I am sure there was some cat dander lurking about. 

Thankfully, a few doses of claritin and quarantining the cats seemed to do the trick, for the most part.  Seeing Bryson all swollen in the face reminded me of a hilarious (and sad) picture of or older dog Chase when his face got swollen.  It happened a few years ago when we were visiting from DC.  Dave doesn’t know what Chase got into to get so blown up, but I am assuming he was stung by a bee.  The saddest thing of all was that Dave and my dads decided to take pictures of him in that state.  Of course, they are funny to look at now- but I was pretty mad when I got home… We didn’t take any pictures of Bee all swollen like a tomato, but if you have any imagination, you can probably guess that this is pretty much what Bryson looked like on Friday night!!

Thankfully, the swelling is completely gone now and Bryson is back to his usual self.