Two weeks of grandkids!

Girls and their purses

Fun being pushed

Front porch in Celina (TX)

Emma and Ava

Girl time

Gramma and Emma

Daddy (Duane Jr.)

Sick baby Ava

Emma likes pretzels

Playing nicely

Momma (Brandey) and Emma

Green snake at Kilgore, TX

Luke driving the Deere

Need for speed

Grandpa peeling Cyprus knees for carving

Circus parade!

Gram, Allie, Luke

School handiwork

Jeremy and Grandpa on the back porch

Allie up a tree

With Grandma

Looking for 'skippers' on the Sabine

New boat ramp

Well! Those two weeks went by very fast! After exiting the Natchez Trace, we spent a day touring Natchez, then forgot to blog about it! Take my word for it, it is worth the stop for food, historical tours, and sitting by the river watching the Mississippi traffic go by. From there we stopped overnight in an RV park outside Tyler TX, then on to Celina. (Interesting note for Ohio people: Celina, Farmersville, and Greenville are towns west to east on Tx St Rt 380.) Here we parked at Lincoln Park RV park. We spent mornings (after our walk) doing chores and errands. Afternoons and evenings we visited son Duane Jr, daughter-in-law Brandey and the twins Emma and Ava (16 mos). They are 1 1/2 months younger than Judah in Ohio. The girls love playing outside being pushed on their little carts, playing in the sandbox, walking around looking at stuff, and playing inside looking at books, pushing cars and balls down the long hallway, and walking around looking at stuff. Unfortunately, just after we arrived they started with runny noses. By the time we left Emma had an eye infection and Ava had an ear infection and fever. The pix of them sitting in laps reflect their resulting lack of energy. In spite of fussy girls and (parental) lack of sleep, we all managed to have a good visit.

Next we retraced our drive east to Kilgore, TX and son Jeremy, daughter-in-law Jennifer and Allie (5 and in Kindergarten) and Luke (2 yrs). As you can see from the pix above (and from pix of visits to Ohio and CA) the cousins are growing up in different environments from suburban Bay Area, to Midwest farm country, and Tx housing development in the country to reclaimed oil land. It makes for interesting visiting among all the family members when time and funds permit. At Kilgore we were more active since the grand kids are older, though we followed the same pattern of doing our stuff in the mornings and visiting in the afternoons and evenings. ( One morning we spent walking around the woods looking for trees Duane can carve into walking sticks and canes. That's where we saw the little green snake. ) With Allie and Luke we played in the tree house (yes, Luke climbed right up and down by himself--he's a climbing monkey just like Grandma), took walks outside, jumped on the trampoline, skipped rocks on the Sabine, swung on the hammock, read books and colored, played made-up games. Jeremy and Jennifer built their house from the ground up (and up). They are in the process of putting a roof on the porch which runs around three sides of the house. Jeremy is proud of his new boat ramp. It is about 100' long. The banks of the Sabine (right now) are about 20' vertical feet below the top. When the river is in flood, the boat ramp will disappear! Saturday was out last day there. That's when Duane was working on his cypress knees. He is sitting on the arrow target. He shot all of those arrows from the back porch. Pretty good for the old man, huh!

Today (Sunday) after church and breakfast at Denny's we made a short hop to Shreveport, LA. We are parked at Travel America RV park for the next 1 1/2 weeks to visit all of our drs. before we move west. In our down time we will get back to making stuff for our family members for Christmas, so don't be surprised if we are quiet for a while.

Basta por hoy!

Louise and Duane