Thanksgiving 2011

Mimi came to visit for Thanksgiving and is staying through Christmas. We started off her visit with the usual stop at the twins house (previous post) and then continued tradition by having a fire pit night, complete with jalapeno and cheese sausage and Head Country BBQ sauce.
The temps were cold, even the cats snuggled up at night.

I ordered the Thanksgiving family meal from Cracker Barrel, intending to have leftovers. We did and everything was pretty good. Not as good as home-cooked, but certainly OK, and I didn't have to cook or clean up.
On Friday after Thanksgiving, while many folks were Black Friday-ing, Bill and I flew the Archer to McKinney. There was a nice tailwind, and we made the trip in 1:49, pretty good for a 4 hour drive. We flew over the clouds at 6500 feet, beautiful sky at that altitude.
We made visits with grandkids John and Taylor, sister Diane and family, and Bill's son Brent and girlfriend Cindy. We left Sunday around noon after showing off the plane to everyone.
John sat in JanMa's lap, put on the headphones and wanted to take a ride on an "airpane".
Taylor just took it all in as she nodded off, it was her naptime!
Brent and Cindy got the feel of the cockpit, and maybe Cindy will be ready for an evening flight to view lights if she comes down for Christmas.
Now for the best part! The wind had turned while we were in Dallas, so we had a strong north wind on our tail for the trip home, which only took 1:35. And as we flew along I-45, we could see the southbound traffic backed up, even as far north as Centerville.
Gusty winds made the landing a little dicey, but Bill handled it well and I wasn't scared not a bit!

Twins on rocking horses

A noisy visitor came to the courtyard fountain and I got his picture from the bedroom window.

I got to spend some time with the twins last week. I had wandered into a spare bedroom and the twins followed me in and found their rocking horses, put there some time ago when they were too little to ride them. I was checking on a cat, and when I turned around, both of them were sitting on the horses rocking away. So we moved them into the game room and they had fun with them the rest of the evening.




I got a few pictures of the kids fooling around after bath time.


Later on we all watched the UT football game on TV, sort of... It was a night game and they were tired and about ready for bed.


Mimi and I stopped by the day she arrived in Houston for the holidays. They didn't cry or run hide from Mimi this time, but sort of hung back until Jeremy gave her the IPad with PeekaBoo Farm running. That drew Claire right in!

Jake stayed close to Mommy and Daddy, until he got going with the guitar!

Claire showed off her kitty ears for Mimi, but when Mimi put the other pair of kitty ears on, Claire disapproved, telling her they were JanMa's kitty ears, not Mimi's!

Presents for the twins and Taylor, sitting in JanMa's living room awaiting wrapping. John already got his for Christmas a year ago.

Playing with John and Taylor

My November trip to Dallas to visit John and Taylor was extended an extra day when I got to babysit John while Taylor was sick. Taylor is much better now, and even though she didn't feel good, she still was active and alert and interested in whatever is happening around her. She is especially tuned in to John, gravitating to wherever he is and wanting to play with whatever he has. He is a good big brother, distracting her by giving her other toys to play with. Doesn't always work, but he tries. Of course, sometimes she gets to something first, and then he wants it!
When I first arrived, Taylor showed off her rocking skills, while John sings along.

Taylor has a great smile, showing lots of teeth.

I caught this picture of John sitting still very engrossed in a TV cartoon.

We took advantage of the nice weather and spent some time playing outside.
Taylor enjoys playing the same games that John does, like filling up the Tonka dump truck.

For lunch we went out for pizza. Taylor had a good appetite, even though she didn't feel that great.
John got a slice of raw dough to play with while waiting for the pizza.
The kids are through eating, and ready to head out to a grassy play area.

JanMa gets John to pose with her for a picture.Back at the house, Taylor starts an early indoctrination into the Longhorn world.


Both kids enjoy wrestling with Daddy.

It was a fun trip, visiting with John and Taylor and parents, spending the evening with my sister and her husband. Don't know what I'll do when they move to the retirement house in Burnet. Maybe by then Jason will have upgraded to a house with a guest room!

Twins at a Fish Fry

Before getting into the fish fry event, I want to share a realization I had last week: not everyone who is capable of stringing words together into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, can write a book worth reading. I know I can't sing or draw, but I still held out hope I could be a great writer. But since reading free and very cheap books on my IPad, I know it ain't so! Even I can tell why some books are cheap/free. Nora Roberts and John Grisham are not cheap/free, but well worth the cost! And by extending that realization, I no longer hold out hope that a Karaoke machine or a sprinkle of paint on canvas will make me a star. So I'll just have to be a terrific JanMa, so far that is working out well for me!

Now to the fish fry I got to take the twins to a week or so ago. their Mom was hostessing and wanted extra hands to help with the kids. I got to dress them in new clothes, drive them to the party, hangout with them and eat fried fish, fries and hush puppies, along with plenty of side dishes and desserts!
Claire had white boots, mittens and a white kitty cat hat. It was a cold night and she loved wearing her new gear.

Jake looked good in his new cords and plaid shirt, and so did Mom.

The kids and I walked all over the grounds, spent time on the swings, looked at a gorgeous full moon rising, then found the DJ and music. Claire loves to dance, and Jake got into it too. Then they danced together, holding hands and turning around in a circle. It was too dark to get that on video, but they were so cute to watch.

After eating and more dancing, Jake started to get tired.
Jake was asleep before I got on the highway, and I carried him straight to bed, no bath or teeth brushing, but I did manage to get a clean pull-up and pj's on him. Claire was still wired from the party, so we sat up and watched TV for awhile. At the end of a show, I told Claire the TV was going night-night, and turned it off. She was happy to let me carry her to bed, and she fell asleep quickly. It was a fun evening for me, and I hope for the kids too.

Quick trip to Austin

I made a quick trip to Austin to meet with an old friend, a student from my very first year of teaching, way back in the early '70's. She was in Austin from California, helping her mom recover from surgery, and I wanted to make a trip to Burnet to check out the retirement property. I decided to go the day before and overnight with Grandma and Grandpa Robin, visit with them and show them pictures of their great-grandchildren.
They had tickets to the Lakeway Players fall performance for that night, and I went with them. It was a musical and actually quite good, I enjoyed the evening.
I was close enough to the stage to tell that these "ladies of the evening" weren't spring chickens, but they had such talent and great voices that it was easy to get into the performance.The next day I drove to Burnet to meet Jamie at Tea-Licious, a great spot to meet for lunch on the square.
Then I took her to view the retirement property, the cactus are thriving during the drought!
On the trip home, I stopped at the new Austin Executive Airport. What was neat about it is the "air-porch", a covered area large enough to taxi into so passengers can load/unload in shade and protected from rain.
On Saturday, I watched the Longhorns on TV. Jake and Claire were decked out in their Longhorn gear and I tried to teach them to signal "touchdown". Hook 'Em Horns is still problematic for their little hands, but we got to signal a lot of touchdowns!
They do love playing in the Miata, and they will be occupied in there for over an hour! It's very interesting about kids, how they can tell the difference between the REAL thing and the toy thing, whether it is a car, cell phone, TV remote, even a baby doll or real baby, kids seem to interact with the real thing on a much more intense level.
They are even starting to prefer the "big" swing to the baby swing, but all they can do now is just hang on and I still have to swing them.

Halloween and Grandchildren

Halloween with grandkids is awesome. You help them get into cute costumes, watch them learn about getting candy when they say trick or treat, and then you go home, leaving their parents to deal with getting them to bed and sleep after the sugar rush.

So first, you get them into costume. Jake quickly learned how to undo the velcro strip fastening his Peter Pan shirt together, and take it off.
Claire was OK with her Tinkerbell costume, but preferred to keep the kitty cat ears on her head rather then wear the fairy headband. The wings have lights on them.
Cousin Alyson has her own pretty Belle costume, and Jake finally agrees to keep his shirt on.
Dad and Mom explain and show the twins how to hold up their pumpkins and say trick or treat to get the candy.

Then Dad shows the twins what is inside their pumpkins by opening a sucker for each of them.
That seals the deal, and they are ready for more trick or treating.
Video of twins getting into swing of trick or treating. You can hear Claire at the end saying Happy Halloween and bye-bye.


After a couple of blocks of walking, the twins meet back up with Aunt Jamie and cousin Travis in his super-hero costume, and the parents decide to head back to the house.

As we were leaving Aunt Jamie's house saying good-byes, Claire, totally unprompted, tries to give Travis a hug and kiss bye-bye. Travis resists, and Claire settles for blowing Travis a kiss.

Back at home, as Jake goes into a melt-down over bath time, it is time for all good grandparents to say night-night and get out of Dodge. BUT JanMa has lost her keys, probably in the locked trunk of the Miata, and of course I had locked the console (where the trunk latch is) to keep the car secure! It is another 3+ hours of a failed AAA visit and a round-trip to Conroe to retrieve the spare key before I get home. I did find the missing key, but I'll never reveal where, my lips are sealed!

Oh, here is a picture of the twins ready to take the Miata out for a spin. They entertained themselves for over an hour playing in the car in the driveway, the day after Halloween.