A Four Generation Visit

During the last week of February, Gran was gracious enough to accompany the kids and me on a road trip to Knoxville. Sarah had visited Grandmother very briefly while she was in the hospital, but it was time that Grandmother and Granddaddy had a proper visit with their 14th grandchild! It had also been months since Nathan had seen them, and me too, for that matter. 

Granddaddy took a wonderful four generation picture of the girls that I know we will always treasure!

A couple of events during the visit were quite memorable for Nathan. The weather was beautiful for most of the visit (except for when we were having severe storms and under tornado warnings, that is!) so Thursday morning Nathan eagerly began exploring the backyard. At one point, Gran, Nathan, and I all sat on the big swing together and *CRASH* we ended up on the ground! Thankfully no one was hurt, but Nathan kept telling everyone for the remainder of the visit "big brown swing bwoken!" Then he would suggest "get new swing Wal-mart."

Nathan had a blast showing a surprised Mommy how he could climb up and down the swing-set ladder all by himself. (It took me a minute to realize Gran was taking a video not a photo, which is why I look goofy grinning at the camera at the beginning of the clip.)


Nathan had a great time searching for, collecting and stacking sea shells that were mixed in with the gravel on the path at the back of the house.

Nathan really loved the playroom for the first time this visit. We had planned on having a fire one evening but never got around to it, so Friday afternoon Granddaddy built a "5 minute" fire for Nathan with some newspaper and kindling. Nathan was SO excited about it!

Nathan's favorite activity was playing at the pool table. I have such fond memories of playing around the pool table with cousins when we were little, where we would grab the balls from the return and roll them out as fast as possible onto the pool table, while others were at the far end corralling them back into the returns. So I showed Nathan a tame version of the game, where he would roll all the balls onto the table and then tell me "ready, set, go!" and I would run around as fast (and noisily) as possible and put them all back int he returns. His favorite two balls that he would want to carry with him around the house were the solid yellow ball and the cue ball.

Although there were a few rough patches during the visit, mainly due to Sarah napping poorly and ending up WAY overtired, we all had a wonderful and very memorable time with the great-grandparents!