Aunt Connie and Jenny came to visit in Idaho Falls on this day. They pulled in around lunch time.I came down the steps, after almost putting on a green shirt. Since I knew we were going to be doing the salsa thing at the restaurant, I didn't want to wear my new shirt, so I wore another one--an orange shirt that had already strangely faded in a couple of spots.
Connie says, "Gee, I guess I didn't get the e-mail this morning, so I could wear my green shirt."
Anna, Tommy, Jack, Lydia, and Ann all had green shirts. A good laugh before all of us loaded into Connie's van and my VW Jetta was a great way to start out the day.
On this day--the 22nd of July--things were still gearing up for the air show in Idaho Falls. The jets were doing their practice runs over the city center, filling the sky with white vapor trails. The roar of jet engines dominated everything.
It was a perfect day for grandchildren and cousins to remember.
Kristin came to lunch with us, so it was a fun get-together. It's interesting how quickly time goes.
I remember when Connie's boys were the age of Tommy and Jack. Connie would drive to Idaho Falls to visit, staying in one of the hotels with a large indoor pool.
Now Richie just graduated from high school, and Steven is in his final time of the whole high school experience too.
On a trip that once had Richie and Steven and Connie's Tommy and eventually Jenny too, now only Jenny makes the drive with her mom. And my guess within a short year or two, Jenny will have friends and activities that will prevent her from going too.
Here I sit for another striking pose. I'm so glad I trimmed the hair from my ears that morning.
It's the curse of being over 30. My hair, like the frost on any pumpkin late in the fall, turns pure. Oh, and it grows wild in your ears, nose, back. And I won't even talk about the rug on my chest. And in my case, my pumpkin head is so large, it has its own weather patterns. That's why it often needs combing for no apparent reason, yet the gravitational pull is also a benefit. I find it easier to keep my hat on my head, except of course during a windstorm.
It's not like I ever viewed myself in my youth as some sort of "babe magnet," but I wasn't disgusting either. The joys of being old, besides of course the whole "hair thing," is the grouchy old man deal. I do that too.
Lydia is tired in this picture. Sammy is not one to let her mom get a night's rest, and during the day, Pop Pop and grandma continually spoil the new princess edition to the Zollinger tribe.
Anna still gets attention, but it is fun to see another little one.
When Lydia first arrived, Sammy would bounce back and forth while on all fours on the carpet, and within one day, she began to scoot across the floor.
Before Lydia left for home at the end of July, Sammy was crawling. It was fun to see how quickly it changed. That's one example of how much fun it is to see things change like that.
It's difficult to get a picture of Sammy that doesn't blur a bit, because she constantly twists and turns and bobs in quick little moves. She have to hold her tightly, or she squirms herself free in your arms.
We still miss the moments where Lydia would hand her to Ann or me. Lydia would have something she needed to do for a bit, and at first, we could only hold the little one for a brief time, and then she would coax for us to pick her up--another change that was so fun to see.
But then as quickly as we arrived for lunch, we packed everything we didn't eat in styrofoam containers, and we went for a walk around the river.
The whole trip went so quickly. Just as things were beginning to be so much fun, it seemed like Lydia was packing to start for a return flight.
Sammy began to get restless in the days just before the end of July. Lydia said that the baby could sense that things were in flux like that.
And we saw the change. Suddenly, Sammy clung to her mom and didn't come to us as easily. But this day was one that was fun, because it was only the 22nd of July, and I kept telling myself that we had a long time before the house was no longer entertained with the sound of three little Jedi warriors, swinging plastic light sabers and eventually dumping containers of toys upon the floor of Jack's room upstairs.
We were off again, having vacated the little restaurant, but we took some parting shots of the chairs that the grandchildren loved.
The walk along the river was one that was warm, really warm for what we seem to see in Idaho Falls. In the evenings, we kept the windows open to cool the house, and then early the next morning, we would begin the summer ritual of closing windows and shutting blinds to keep the house cool.
It's what you do when you don't have air conditioning--something that was a luxury when we built our house. Now it's something that everyone has and something I now wish we had.
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