A Day With Great Grandma Peggy

February was a very up and down month for the family. It saw Nick turn 17 and Grandma turn 60 as high points. It also saw a bit of high school angst and some trouble for our resident teen . . . details not to be blogged. Suffice it to say, quite a bit of stress was felt by all and things are definitely much better at the time of this posting. One of the nice high points in February was getting the boys together with their Great Grandma for a picnic and day at the neighborhood park. We all had a great time!


The look says it all . . . Mom, I had a bite of sandwich . . . is it cookie time now? Our skinny little bird of a boy! We constantly wonder where his non-stop energy comes from, certainly NOT from calories. We're pretty sure he's solar powered.




After lunch, Grandma supervised as Xander discovered some park toys to play with . . . never mind all the swings and jungle gym equipment . . . for Xander playing with the park-truck took top priority.





For anyone who thinks 17 is "grown up" HA! Nick spun himself silly on the whirlygig-whatchamacallit. It's'just too bad we didn't get any pictures of him diving head-first down the slides too!






If there's anything that could get Xander away from the truck, it was the sight of a cute little girl having loads of fun spinning on the whirlygig . . . Nick was more than happy to provide a little additional oomph to the spin to ensure maximum laughter and dizziness of his little brother . . .




Climb? Climb? Who needs to climb? Xander had fun impressing Great Grandma with his ability to "walk" up the climbing wall portion of the "little kids" area of the park.






Nick demonstrating the fine art of dangling from monkey bars while Xander gets a little boost from dad.


After a couple of hours of excellet cool weather the rain finally arrived to wash out our day. No worries though because it ws then back to Great Grandma's house for ice cream sandwiches and a bit more play-time before we all headed home.

Nick is old enough to appreciate the importance of getting to know a great grand relative like his Grandma Peggy and Xander will understand it too in a few more years. For now it's nice that they can both build some wonderful memories to carry with them for many years to come.

And now for some pics . . .

Somewhere during the ramblings of the last (ahem, January) entry I promised pictures so here they are along with a few comments to help guide viewers along. Enjoy!


These first pictures are from Nick's little family Birthday dinner. Nick insisted over and over that he did NOT want a party with friends or family . . . even when we offerred to pay for a night out for him and a few friends to a location of his choice . . . hey, no worries, it saved us a small fortune. So we had a quite (as quited as TGI Friday's can be) family dinner and invited the Houston-area grandparents along for the meal . . . or did they invite us.

Either way, we had a great time and the Darroh dining out curse did not disappoint - as Nick's grandmother's salmon dish arrived very late . . . and was decidedly NOT salmon. (More on the curse at some later blog, but the curse is that when 3 or more Darroh's join for a meal out one of the orders, without fail, arrives completely wrong . . . and inevitably winds up being free). But here are a few pics of the boys, Grandma and Grandpa.


Happy 17th Nick!!!!

And it should go without saying, but of course we'll say it anyway, YES! Having a 17 year old soon-to-be-senior in High School does make us feel a bit, ahem, middle aged.