More Than Passing Time
How do two occasional grandparents make their first and maybe only week with their 8 yr old grandson memorable, beneficial and fun?
Category Family
Season of Sprouts: Family Children
This is perhaps the most memorable quote of the summer–so far. Overheard from the back seat on the 800 mile trip from home to Goose Creek, the four year old offers this bit of wisdom to no one in particular.…
Where Trouble Melts Like Lemon Drops
I think his territory might be limited to just this stretch of Carolina coast, but here, the good elf Ruddy, has been very busy getting the younger children primed for Christmas by laying out surprises overnight for the joy of…
Vicarious Vitality: Watching Them Run
Yes, we have two grand daughters, and it is only because the older one had a NIGHT game that she has not been featured in this back to back g-dau series. The take-home from watching the energy expended on the…
Joy for Free
Watching our grand daughter frolic in the sprinkler, I remembered the utter joy the first day we were allowed to go barefoot–in the zoysia grass, under the mimosas, only to get “stung on a bee” as one of us lamented…
Tupperware Party
Busy busy morning. So much to do. So many cabinets to explore. Places to hide. Things to put on your head; And Dumpa’s. No telling what else we’ll find to get into today, but for certain, little Ollie (Henry’s sib)…
Battle Buckets
Only small homeotherms with hummingbird metabolism could survive repeated dousings of creek water and enjoy it. The picture was taken about 11 yesterday morning. By 2, without being commanded to do so for the sake of their exhausted adult supervisors,…
Rainy Day Crazies: Averted!
Oh joy. When you’re in charge of activities for two little girls and a dog on speed you dread the prospects of being rained indoors. Not that we would have been, completely, had the forecast continued to call for 80%…
Prelude to Winter
Excerpted from “November” in the Floyd County Almanac (unpublished first draft.) …A seriousness settles upon us by mid-November, mornings not light enough to cross the creek to tend the cussed birds until after seven. The board-bridge across Goose Creek is treacherous,…
All Quiet On The (South) Western (VA) Front
The grand daughters are back on the coast and the house this morning after the holidays is quiet and calm and empty once more. Not to say that the same house did not shrink considerably over the weekend with five…
There And Back Again
After some 1800 miles of car travel since last Wednesday, we are finally home again. I found it was just too much trouble to try to blog from the road with one hand and the iPad or the phone, so…
Be It Ever So Jumbled
My desk, as usual, to an outside observer, is a mess. But it’s my mess. It does not require freshening up by housekeeping. It does not have to be returned to a rental warehouse across town. My desk is my…
We Couldn’t Call Her “ITâ€
Several of you have been curious about where the name GANDY came from, especially since it is nothing quite so odd as the hemlock tree’s genus that was the name of our recently-departed pup, Tsuga. I’ll take the lazy way…
Filling the Void: The Next Lord or Lady of Goose Creek
UPDATE: We’re going to see all three “blond” puppies (2 females and one male) on Saturday. Wanna bet on us coming home without one? So very much has happened over the past few days, during which I have pretty much…