My son and his wife and their three kids aged 6, almost 4, and 2 came down to see us.
It was the best kind of birthday present. My grandchildren are one of the greatest joys of my life these days.
My son and his wife were kind enough to leave the entertainment of the grandchildren to Tillerwoman and me while they attended to important stuff they needed to do on their computers.
So we played and played and played.
The kids played on our swing set and picked raspberries and blueberries in Tillerwoman's garden - and immediately ate them all of course.
We played card games and board games.
We played with toy cars.
There was cooking.
There was paint.
There was drawing with chalk all over my drive.
For dinner on Friday we all went out to dinner at Evelyn's.
One of their "signature" dishes is Lobster Chow Mein.
I love lobster. I quite like chow mein. But the combination always sounded kind of weird to me and I had never plucked up the courage to try it before.
I tried it.
It was weird.
But when the waitress asked me afterwards if I had enjoyed it I gave a noncommittal answer.
"I can finally cross it off my bucket list. Now that I've had Evelyn's Lobster Chow Mein I can die happy!"
All the adults laughed.
My 6 year old granddaughter, sitting right next to me, looked glum and said, "I can't laugh at that."
I had made her sad by talking about dying. She didn't know it was just an expression.
Our visitors stayed the night and all the kids came into our bed on Saturday morning and we read some books together.
Some of my friends were planning to go sailing on Buzzards Bay on Saturday but by the time our visitors left, it was too late for me to go and join them.
That's OK. My grandkids are even more fun than sailing.
By the way, my grandchildren are not really called Vera, Chuck and Dave. That's a line from the Beatles' song When I'm Sixty Four. "Grandchildren on my knee - Vera, Chuck and Dave."
I turned 64 on Friday.
Life is good.
I think I'll take a nap now.
16 comments:
You are blessed
Great post!
You know you're getting old when you have to explain Beatles quotes :) Many happy returns.
Love the driveway.
There was a story years ago that the line about Vera Chuck and Dave was written by someone not named Paul, (or John, George or Ringo.) The contributor was offered his due credit, or compensation to have his name omitted. He chose the money. That's a story I heard.)
Hmm. I hadn't heard that story Michael. According to what's out there on the Google, Paul originally wrote this song when he was about 16, and John is quoted as saying that he contributed a few lines later including "Vera, Chuck and Dave."
Your grandkids are even more fun than sailing?
By the time you're my age, your grandchildren will be sailing! Just hang on to your Laser long enough!
Happy birthday Mr Tillerman! You're a lucky man indeed.
Hopefully soon you will be able to take them on board with you in your laser and show them the ropes.
The only thing better will be when they're old enough so you all can build boats together. Hey, I've got it: build a FrankenMoth out of a dead laser hull!
We were building boats together yesterday.
OK. It was a model wooden boat. But it does have sails!
Driveway chalk rules! Happy Birthday Tillerman!
Thanks Baydog.
And actually I didn't take a nap after writing this post. I went sailing. Woo hoo!
A photo editor I used to work for often quoted an old adage:
Simple pictures are best.
He meant that pictures of genuine, human moments don't need tricks of lighting or perspective to tell their stories.
I think simple blog posts are best, too.
Happy birthday, grandad.
I hope that means you like the photo. I thought it worked well even though it's a bit unconventional in not showing the faces of the three people in it and it has a lot of grey background. For some reason I liked both those features.
At that age, life is mostly still a blank canvas, and we're just learning to draw.
Exactly. And they haven't learned the sad lesson that we older people know all too well - the chalk always runs out before you can color in all of Granddad's drive.
Wow!
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