At the end of my last post, I told y’all I’d be in Pennsylvania for a few days. I left on Monday and got back around midnight on Thursday. It would’ve been earlier, except I stopped at Amy’s to help shuttle kids from sports practice and celebrate our August TTT (the first official one since Shannon got back).
Friday afternoon, Amy dropped the kids at our house and went off to Pittsburgh for the weekend for some military-related conference. It’s been an exhausting but fun weekend.
Here are a few pics captured over the last six days…
To truly appreciate the next shot, you need a bit of back story. Hubby knew I had a bunch of work to get done on Friday. So after he took Amy to the airport, he took all three kids to the pool. All by himself. They didn’t get back until just before 5:00 PM. Since Joey missed his afternoon nap, he fell asleep with Hubby on the recliner. He woke up in time for snack and, since he’d already napped, he didn’t think he needed to go to bed.
This boy makes the funniest “I’m REALLY mad now” faces I have ever seen. He still says “my” instead of “I” when speaking about himself.
On Saturday, we had to get Gaige to a football scrimmage game and Brianna to her soccer opening day celebration.
Hubby did a great job keeping Joey busy while Gaige played his game.
Speaking of Gaige… look at the size of the helmet this little guy has to wear. I bet it weighs about 25% of his body weight.
Most of Brianna’s morning was spent standing around waiting for team photos. I didn’t get many shots of her on Saturday.
Sunday was really Brianna’s big day. I had to drop her off at an end-of-summer camp for kids with deployed parents. Gaige and Joey are too young to attend. She was SUPER excited.
I told her I had to take plenty of pics to show Mommy the drop-off because I know Amy was not happy to have missed it.
The thing that amazed me was the kid was not even the slightest bit nervous or apprehensive. Here you have a nine-year-old girl who has never been to sleepaway camp and doesn’t know if she’ll know anyone there. That’s just her personality, though. She’s a very friendly and outgoing kid.
When I got back to the house, Gaige, Joey and I tossed the football around a bit. Gaige was a bit surprised that I know how to throw a football. How many grannies do you know who can do that? 🙂
We fed the boys dinner then got them bathed and ready for bed. Amy’s flight, which was supposed to arrive at 6:40, was delayed until 10:05. Hubby actually just left to pick her up at the airport. They’ll either all spend the night here or she’ll wake them and drive them home tonight.
As hard as it is to believe, our youngest grandson, Joey, hit three years old today.
Those three years have FLOWN by…
His party was actually on Saturday. Amy planned it in shifts so as not to overwhelm everyone. “Everyone” in this case being us old folks. Family was invited early in the day and the friends with their hordes of children came late in the day.
I wanted to get a picture of the three grandkids before the other children arrived and chaos ensued, but I didn’t. So I had to settle for pulling them outside and making them sit. Of course, by then they were all sugared-up and acting goofy, so this is the best I could do.
It’s not a great picture, but the others were much worse. Although I must say, I love the look on Joey’s face and the sparkle in his eye in the picture below, so I just cut the other two out. It is Joey’s birthday after all.
Amy and the kids spent the weekend with us at the WV place. Klondike, their very large, white German Shepherd came along, too.
This post is probably WAY too long for most readers, but I have lots of pics to share. If nothing else, just scroll through and look at the images. Be sure to click on each if you’d like to see a better (larger) picture.
The only big plan for the weekend was for all of us to do a bike ride on the C & O Canal. So one of the first things Hubby had to do on Saturday was install the bike seat on Amy’s bike. He put one on his bike, too, so they could trade off if necessary.
Brianna and Gaige can ride their own bikes. But Joey is too little to be able to keep up with all of us, hence the bike seat.
Saturday was pretty hot, and we needed to do some shopping, so we decided to wait until Sunday for the bike ride.
We all sort of just goofed around on Saturday morning. The kids spent most of that time outside playing. The dogs did, too. Our girls were a bad influence on Klondike.
Amy and I walked Joey down the driveway. I asked him to pose on the little bridge Hubby made for me years ago for my pond. Since I no longer have a pond, I was quite happy to put the bride to use at the WV place.
Joey thinks the new gate is lots of fun. It was Amy’s idea to have him climb behind the sign. Check out the dirt on his legs!
Brianna and Gaige were off “having an adventure.” They were exploring the woods around the house. When I told them not to touch any dead stuff they might find laying around, I think they thought I was kidding. Thank goodness they listened because they found the source of all the bones the girls have been finding over the last few months.
Joey, being a boy, loves seeing Pop and G’s motorcycles. Pop started his up, sat Joey on the seat and let him rev the engines. That’s no “cheese” grin in the picture below. That’s a “look-I’m-riding-Pop’s-motorcycle” smile.
Gaige and Brianna were having a blast exploring our woods. I don’t know how many times they went down the very steep hill behind our house, which they then had to climb back up. Far too many times to count, that’s for sure.
That’s one of the reasons I have far more shots of Joey. Brianna and Gaige just didn’t sit still long enough. And remember that bike ride we were planning? It didn’t happen. Not for Joey and I anyway. He woke up with a fever that had him feeling really crappy. Once he had medication in him, he felt much better, but as soon as the medication started to wear off he’d feel bad again. So he and I stayed at the cabin while Hubby and Amy took the older kids for a ride. Hubby took my point-and-shoot camera along, too, and did manage to capture a few good shots for me.
After the ride Brianna and I had back in April, the kids were REALLY looking forward to this trip. Amy was, too. They aren’t able to get out riding much at home.
Meanwhile, back at the cabin… with a fresh dose of medication in his system, Joey was ready to roll.
After riding for a little while, we took a cookie break then Joey got to play in some water. That’s an activity Amy thought he’d enjoy. She was so right, as usual. He sat there for about an hour and a half, happy as could be, making soup. What kind of soup? When I asked him, he thought about it a bit, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Regular soup.”
Soup making is messy business. I had to hang Joey’s shorts outside to dry while he napped.
Speaking of naptime, look what showed up outside our kitchen window while Joey was sleeping and everyone else was still away.
The Pileated Woodpecker, which is about as big as a Crow, is the largest woodpecker in almost all of North America.
Pileated Woodpeckers are extremely skittish/bashful, so this is the first time I have ever gotten a decent shot of one after five years of our living in the woods.
After the bike ride, Gaige and Brianna were more than happy to take over the water play. Joey was back in the house. His fever kicked back in while he was napping, but Amy returned literally just as he was waking up and gave him some more medicine.
After they tired of that activity, they tossed the football around for a while.
I’m not saying this because Gaige is my grandson. I’m saying this because it’s a fact. Gaige, at age 6, throws the football amazingly well. See his fingers perfectly aligned on the stitches? You should see the spiral this kid lays on the ball. And he throws it in a very purposeful, practiced arc right to his target. I was quite impressed. Really. I have never seen a six-year-old throw a football with such precision.
I could barely throw a Nerf football at his age. Granted, the ball he was using isn’t full size, but it is definitely larger and harder to manage than a Nerf ball would have been.
I have no idea how well he catches because Brianna can’t throw a football very well at all and I was too busy cooking dinner at the time to play with him.
By the end of the day, even the dogs were exhausted.
Sunday was a long day, but we still managed to squeeze in a campfire. I don’t have any pictures of that, you’ll just have to trust me. As warm as it was, I didn’t really want a campfire, but the kids would have been so disappointed had we not had one. During Brianna’s last visit, there was a statewide burn ban on, so we couldn’t have a fire.
By Monday afternoon, it was time for Amy and the kids to pack up and head back to civilization. It really was a great weekend. But it went by FAR too fast. Hubby and I are already looking forward to their next visit.
I actually have quite a few more pictures of Brianna that I took while she didn’t know I was watching. While Gaige and Joey were playing, she was dancing. It was hysterical. I’ll try to get those pics into a slideshow and posted tomorrow for your viewing pleasure. 🙂
I’ve taken on a side project lately that I hope may one day become more than a side project. I may or may not tell y’all about it one day. Don’t worry, it’s nothing Earth-shattering, super-exciting, or anything most of you would care about anyway. That side project, however, requires images. And if there’s anything I have lots of, it’s images. Right? You know, pictures.
Hubby makes fun of me because I have this horrible habit of NOT deleting the shots I don’t want. Because I might want and/or need them one day.
Amy asked if Hubby and I would keep the grandkids this weekend. We almost said no because there was a homeowners’ association meeting scheduled for the WV place that we needed to go to. We both knew there was NO WAY Gaige (6) and Joey (2.5) could sit through that.
After some thought, we decided I could come to WV and attend the HOA meeting with Brianna while Hubby stayed home in MD with Gaige and Joey. Oh yeah, and Klondike (who is quite a bit larger than our dogs).
Before the meeting, we went to McDonald’s for breakfast. One thing you forget when you don’t have kids around daily is how SLOWLY they eat. (About 1/4 of Brianna’s bacon, egg and cheese bagel went to the meeting with us.)
Asking a nine-year-old to sit quietly through an HOA meeting is asking a lot. Despite her having her iPOD (music and games), two chapter books and a word search puzzle book, I was really wondering if Brianna, a talking machine, would be able to make it through the meeting. She complained a little bit, but actually behaved amazingly well considering that most adults have a hard time staying awake, sitting still and keeping quiet during HOA meetings.
She was the only kid in attendance, of course, and the adults seemed tickled to have her there and chat with her. She told a couple of them we’d be going on a “Bike Hike” after the meeting. I corrected her several times explaining that we were going for a bike ride. I reminded her we would not be walking.
“Hiking is walking,” I said. “We’ll be riding our bikes. So quit calling it a bike hike.” (As an aside, she also told at least three people that her Aunt Shannon had had her ear bitten by a monkey.)
Not that long ago, Hubby and I biked a small segment of the C&O Canal between Oldtown, Maryland and Town Creek. I figured that after a 3-hour HOA meeting, Brianna would be ready to burn off some energy, so we brought her bike along. It really is a great place to ride.
Before we left for the canal, I showed her the piece of coal I’d found last time I was there. She was quite impressed. She asked if we could go find some coal for her. I told her it was a pretty far ride (just under 5 miles), but she was determined. She really liked my coal.
It had rained for a couple of hours in the morning and was supposed to rain again in the afternoon, but we decided to give it a go anyway. So after taking the dogs for a long walk, we headed for Oldtown.
It wasn’t as sunny as the last time I was there. It was cooler, too. But we still saw lots of different critters.
“I’m not driving you crazy stopping to point out all of the animals, am I?” I asked her. “No!” she assured me. “I love critters, too.”
That frog was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Brianna likes critters just about as much as I do (which I honestly never thought possible). So she was thrilled to see the various little critters we saw. And we really did see quite a variety. I took my zoom lens this time, so I was able to get some better turtle pics. She, too, was amazed at how many turtles are there.
About two miles into the ride, I realized we’d probably both have the energy to do the entire five miles. So I told her I thought we’d make it. She was thrilled. She really, really wanted some coal of her own. She kept saying stuff like, “I know that’s far, and we might be pretty tired. But if we say that’s our goal, and we just keep going no matter how tired we get, we’ll be able to make it.” I tell you, the girl is a talking machine. I found her little motivational speech to herself quite entertaining.
On the way to the canal, we’d discussed all of Brianna’s favorite colors. Teal is #1. Followed by light blue and dark blue. So she liked seeing the Virginia Bluebells that are still in bloom at various spots along the towpath.
The more we rode, the more critters we saw. We were having a great time. We’d gone about 4 miles when Brianna said, “This road is starting to feel funny.” She kept pushing, though, and talking about the wonderful coal we were going to find.
A couple of minutes later, however, we realized her bike had gotten a flat tire.
Crap.
We only had a couple of options at that point. Keep walking to Town Creek, stash her bike in the bushes then ride two-up the 5 miles back to Oldtown. Or turn around and walk back to where we’d left the truck.
“But, my coal,” she said. “We can’t abandon my goal.”
That’s when I told her we’d walk back to the truck and then drive to Town Creek to find her coal. “And,” I said, “if we don’t find any coal, you can have my piece, because by then you will certainly have earned it.” The whole time, I’m thinking we’re screwed. I mean, 4 miles is a long way for anyone to walk, much less a nine-year-old who had already biked that far. But we really didn’t have any choice, so we set off.
She did complain some, mainly about not achieving her goal. But we kept pushing. We were walking at a decent clip, too, spurred on by the sky that was growing increasingly dark with every passing second.
The good thing about walking was that we could look more closely for critters without having to worry about driving into the canal, which is how I noticed this big-ass snake sunning itself in a tree.
And this neat tree full of woodpecker holes. (We even saw a Pileated Woodpecker not far from our cabin on the way home later.)
This picture made me giggle every time I looked at it last night after we arrived back at the cabin. “You TOLD me to look sad!” she said every time I laughed. Which is true. I had. At the time, she’d asked me why. I told her we’d just trekked at least three miles, that it would be funny to make people think she was exhausted. That was MUCH easier than explaining that I wanted it for effect on my blog, which would only have spurred a gazillion questions like: what’s a blog? You have a blog? Why haven’t I ever seen your blog? Why do you need a blog? Are there other pictures of me there? Etc., etc., etc.
I took this picture of Brianna sitting on her bike just before we put the bikes into the truck. Does she look even slightly miserable/exhausted/hungry? She looks even happier in the next shot. Can you guess why? Just one, four-letter word is your answer…
Just as I’d promised, we drove to the Town Creek Aqueduct to find Brianna some coal. And because I remember weird stuff like exactly where I’d found some coal weeks prior, we hit the mother lode. She walked away with EIGHT pieces of coal. She was beyond thrilled. Until she realized, after settling into the truck with her coal lined-up on her lap, that there was a smallish-but-menacing black spider walking across the largest chunk. She didn’t shriek hysterically like most little girls would have, but she wasn’t thrilled either.
I calmly grabbed that particular piece (I was wearing my grandmother hat, remember) and tossed it out the window.
“No!” she said. “My coal!” (Who would’ve thought coal, COAL, would have inspired her so?)
“I just wanted to knock the spider off,” I told her after I’d retrieved her prize coal hunk. (Luckily we hadn’t started moving yet.)
It was at that point, by the way, that the rain started. At least our timing had worked out.
Since we hadn’t eaten lunch, we drove to Fort Ashby and had a pig-out dinner. Brianna had a cup of broccoli cheese soup, a salad, and chicken parmigiana with spaghetti. I had a cup of vegetable soup, meatloaf with french fries and cole slaw. She was quite tickled that the waitress was treating her like an adult. And an older couple at the next table were chit-chatting with us throughout the meal. They were amazed not only by what she was eating, but by how much. She finished it all (we both saved a few bites for the dogs), so we topped the meal off with some yummy strawberry shortcake.
While eating, she informed me that she wanted to move to West Virginia with me, “Because people here really seem to like kids.”
Care to guess what her first order of business was upon arriving back at the cabin? Washing her coal.
After I fed the dogs, we took them for a short walk. Then we made a critter list, which Brianna was also quite proud of.
If you click on the picture, you should be able to read the list. After this picture was taken, we realized we’d forgotten to add the woodpecker.
Notice the coal reference?
Brianna insisted that she should take a picture of me, too. So here I am, looking lovely as usual.
At the end of our day, I told Brianna that “bike hike” was a pretty accurate way to describe our day after all.
And when I tucked her into bed (at 11:00 after two LONG games of Skip-Bo), I told her how proud I was of her for being such a good sport all day.
I’m already looking forward to our next ride, after I buy a tire repair kit, that is.
I felt like such a clueless grandmother last night. A COLD and clueless granny. For more reasons than one.
That’s Brianna, my granddaughter, pictured on the left. She’s nine. So that her Mom, Amy, wouldn’t have to drag Gaige (six) and Joey (almost three) out past their bedtime, I volunteered to take Brianna to her lacrosse game.
I’ve never been to a lacrosse game. I may have watched bits and pieces of games on TV, but I never gave much thought to the rules.
Before I get too far into the story, I have to say it was cold and rainy at game time. In fact, because of the rain, despite leaving my house at almost 5:00 on the dot, I didn’t get to Amy’s house until about 6:15. By 6:20, I was back on the road with Brianna in the back seat. We didn’t get to the field until 6:45 for her 7:00 game.
It was still raining when we arrived, but not nearly as hard as it had been during my entire trek north. By game-time, it was barely misting. Soon enough, it stopped altogether.
But it was still cold. It was also almost dark, what with all of the lingering clouds and late hour. I only had my point-and-shoot camera with me because of the rain, which is why the quality of these pics is less-than-optimal.
Are you one of those people who think soccer (aka football) rules are confusing? Yes? Well, then you would have felt even more clueless than me.
I mean, I GET soccer. Soccer is not a sport one has to play to understand, but playing helps. Lacrosse, I’m convinced, is a sport one must play to understand. Even if I knew some of the rules, I wouldn’t attempt to explain them here because that would make for one LONG (and boring!) post.
One thing for sure, I can tell Brianna enjoys lacrosse. She seems pretty good at it, too. I think.
After the game, she asked me, “Did I play well?”
“I don’t know,” I told her.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well, I had no clue what was going on. I don’t know if you were doing what you were supposed to be doing, or playing where you were supposed to be playing, but you looked good when you were carrying the ball,” I explained.
And she carried it quite a few times.
She either caught or scooped the ball up and ran all of the way down the field with the ball cradled in her stick.
It did look pretty good.
Look at the determination and focus on that face.
Even if I didn’t know what was going on, it was cool to watch.
And as I watched I couldn’t help but think not only of Brianna, but about her parents, too.
She’s got great parents.
There’s TJ, who spent a very large portion of his young life on various baseball fields and realizes the importance of sports. And there’s Amy, also athletically inclined, who is totally committed to making sure all of her kids get to take advantage of every opportunity, sporting or otherwise, available to them. Despite the fact — and this is HUGE — that TJ is away now and will be away for another 12+ months on his Army deployment. With three kids, it isn’t easy keeping up with all of that stuff and still maintaining some semblance of normalcy.
Hubby and I give Amy lots of credit for doing what she does and being such a great Mom. We give TJ lots of credit, too. But he doesn’t get mentioned here nearly as much as he should.
The man loves his family. He loves being a Dad. And he’s a very good husband to Amy.
TJ means the world to Amy and the kids. Living without him over the next year is going to be tough on them. But it will be tough on him, too. He’s not the kind of Dad that says, “Oh, man, I have to be a coach again?” He’s the kind that’s at the front of the line during sign-ups/registration saying, “I’ll be the coach.” And, “I’m going away, but I’ll do everything I can until the very last possible second before I deploy if it will help.”
Why am I bringing all that into this Clueless Granny post? There are two reasons.
One… when I was asking Brianna about her coaches on the way to the game last night, she told me all about Coach Willy. Yes, she likes him. Yes, he’s nice. Yes, he seems to know what he’s doing.
She went on to say, “There’s another coach, too. A really good one. But he can’t be here.” After a pause, she continued with, “His name is Coach TJ.”
She didn’t sound sad (she understands the deployment thing), she sounded resigned. And proud. Which brings me to reason number two…
I personally have not always given TJ the credit he deserves. I sing Amy’s praises here regularly. But TJ definitely deserves mention, too. He really is a great Dad. He doesn’t think he’s special, he just thinks he’s doing his job.
TJ, this post is for you. I haven’t said here often enough, you are very special. You are a great Dad.
Hubby and I are both very proud of you, too. We could not have asked for a better father for our grandchildren.
And don’t worry, while you’re off doing your job, protecting our country, Hubby and I are two of many people who have totally got your back.