Happy Easter! Happy Spring! (A letter from Sammie the cat)

April 2011—Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

This tree bloomed outside the front of our house. When we moved here in September, it had green leaves and then lost the leaves during the winter, so it was a surprise to see the dark pink and lavender leaves.

It’s Sammie Ann Beutke DeVito writing. I know how much you all love and adore me, and my clever writing skills, so I thought I’d give you a quick update about how we’re doing in the Bluegrass. 

I went to the vet's office for my annual check-up, and this picture was in our exam room. Too cute! It reminds us of Dolly. I think she would have liked Kentucky.

Easter is so late this year, but it’s finally starting to feel like spring up here in Kentucky. We even had a dusting of snow at the beginning of April. 

We had a little snow just as the trees were starting to bloom. It has snowed here each month since November, so six months out of the year!

It has rained and rained and rained this month. One night, the winds were so bad that the chairs on the back deck blew across the deck and smashed into my mom’s flowerpot, and it broke into several pieces. The wind also destroyed the umbrella on the porch table.

After the storm, my parents surveyed the damage. In addition to the broken pot and umbrella, the grill cover blew off and flew into the neighbor's yard.

My dad used super glue to fix the flower pot.

Cash and I slept through the whole storm. We were dreaming about the two bird feeders outside that attract many types of birds. We could sit for hours watching them and thinking about how tasty they would be for Easter dinner.

My parents both finish teaching for the spring semester at Eastern Kentucky University on April 29, the day of the Royal Wedding in England. (By the way, I was invited to the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate, but I really dislike those long flights across the Atlantic. I hear airplane food is horrible, and now they charge you for a blanket and a pillow, and you don’t even get to keep it!)

My mom hopes to teach at EKU again in the fall. EKU’s mascot is a colonel like Colonel Sanders who started Kentucky Friend Chicken, but the mascot is an angrier version of him. Maybe this colonel is upset that he doesn’t know KFC’s secret blend of 11 herbs and spices.

My dad starts dental school at the University of Kentucky (Go Cats!) on August 1, and he is quite excited. Before he starts this crazy, I mean awesome, adventure, my parents are planning to leave us here all alone so they can visit Florida this summer. My mom thinks we need a cat sitter, but I’m trying to convince her that we’ll be fine on our own. She said if we could learn to use the toilet and flush, we wouldn’t need a sitter. I don’t know how easy it will be to learn that, especially for Cash.

We’d love for you to visit us if you haven’t already. There are lots of exciting things to do. People love horses up here. I haven’t ridden one yet, but Cash and I might go to the Kentucky Derby in May. It’s actually in Louisville, not Lexington. Don’t you think I’d look so cute in one of those big hats the ladies wear at the Derby?

We hope you have a wonderful Easter! I really hope the Easter Bunny brings us a baby bunny and chick, but I don’t think that will happen. My parents look forward to seeing some Florida folks in June. They can’t wait to simmer in the heat and humidity! :)

Love,

Sammie, Cash, David and Allyson DeVito

Say Cheese!

I grew up around cameras. My dad purchases a new camera every few years, and I remember several film cameras that he used when I was younger. My Aunt Vada also takes tons of photos of everything, and at one point, she told me she kept all the negatives (I wonder if my students know the meaning of this word in this context) in one box in her house, so if there was a fire, she'd grabbed that box and not the dozens (probably closer to a hundred) photos albums. My grandpa had a Polaroid camera that we loved to take photos with and wait a few minutes for our images to appear. (One time, Papa took some Polaroid shots of the TV set, while the music group, The New Kids on the Block, appeared on the American Music Awards on TV, so I could see them. He was afraid I wasn't watching the live show at my house. Little did he know that I was recording it on a thing called a VCR!)

I also have memories of my dad setting up a giant projector and screen in our family room, so we could watch "silent" films of me as a baby in the late 1970s. When my younger brother was born in 1985, my dad bought our first video camera. It was the bulky kind that required an assistant, usually me, to hold part of it in a camera bag while he filmed. We lugged it to Disney, Dollywood, beach trips and family gatherings. Part of the camera was actually the VCR, and it never failed that we couldn't find a blank tape to record something on when we needed it. I'm fairly certain the final episode of "Dallas" on TV erased one of my birthday parties.

I even found a camera in a cow pasture once. It was a bright yellow underwater camera in a bright yellow bag, and I discovered it one day while helping my day feed the cows in the field in back of our house. There was a roll of film in the bag that we developed, but it was hard to tell who had taken the photos since they were mainly of buildings in a large city. I'm not sure if it fell out of a plane or someone walking through our property dropped it. It's still a mystery, but I used the camera to take many underwater photos at the beach and in my grandparent's pool. 

I remember dropping off rolls of film and waiting for several days or even a week before we could pick up our prints, and we would always get two sets of prints. Then, a radical new way of processing prints within an hour happened. Now, I cannot remember the last time I actually had printed photos made. I guess it was for our wedding and honeymoon in 2004.

During college, I was a telecommunication major (fancy way of saying broadcast journalism), and we used very heavy and expensive cameras and tripods for reporting the news. One of my friends accidentally backed over a tripod while driving, and it cost several thousand dollars to replace it. Recently, I purchased a Kodak Zi8 pocket video camera for $120 from Amazon.com. It has a built-in USB arm that plugs into a computer, so it's easy to download good quality video and edit it in a matter of minutes.

Everything is much less expensive and easier to use now, and I am very fortunate that my family is camera and computer literate because my parents are keeping my nephew each week, and they send photos and video of him to me via email. My dad has a digital camera now that also records video, and it fits into his pocket. I guess he doesn't need an assistant anymore.

I am so thankful for these advancements since I am able to see the little guy smiling, laughing and growing into an adorable little man. I also can see how much my parents are enjoying their first grandchild. I can't imagine waiting weeks at a time for my parents to take photos, have them developed, and then mail them to me.

Here are a few of my recent favorites. I know I am biased, but I think he's probably the most adorable baby ever! :)

Here are a couple of videos. 

My brother and his boy....