Friday, July 16, 2010

Re-cap of trip.....

How to begin - hmmm - at the beginning and with few words. I know - you don't think I can do it but I can - here goes.........
Just one small view of what we could never capture on camera from a moving car. The little back roads taking us to West Virginia were lovely but then we came out onto open roads to breathtaking vistas.A lovely garden in honor of Lolo's Mom in their back yard. I love how Ann and Naoki and Lolo's backyards combine to make one big playground for Michael and Page. Ann loved hearing their screams of laughter through her window (did I mention that she doesn't use her air conditioning?).Our beautiful Lolo with a little girl she keeps for her friend and who Michael has adopted as his "niece". She is such a cutie pie. Lolo fixed a feast for us that night and was in the middle of grilling steaks outside when a big thunderstorm (with lightening) came through drenching her. Then the power went out for a few hours and had just come back on when her friends dropped in with a second dessert. Lolo outdid herself in the kitchen this week - breakfast casserole, cheesy potato casserole, steaks, grilled chicken and her famous oven baked french toast. Lolo and Leah were in the kitchen talking most of the time we were there. We kept raving about her great cooking and her son and hubby came up with her famous cream puff pastry cake/pie. YUM. It seemed like when one of them would mention something she fixed they liked, off she went to the store for the ingredients to fix it. She made fresh sweet iced tea for me everyday - and served it in Ann's pitcher. Sweet girl. Such hospitality!!Awww - Tetsu!!! I love this doggie. I don't know what I like most - her curly little tail that becomes straight when she lies down and becomes really relaxed, her big brown eyes that get so excited, her cute little ears that she loves to have rubbed, her stocky little body, her sweet disposition, how she loves to have massages or that she is sooooo sweet!!!!! They did a great job of training her.Looking at the back of Ann's house from Naoki's back yard.Looking from the front yard toward their back yards between the houses.The beautiful birch tree in Lolo's front yard. I love these trees - is it because you very seldom see any if at all down South?My beautiful nephew's beautiful son. He and Page hit it off even quicker than they did a few years ago when they were all down here for the family reunion. They played until they were exhausted. It appears that everyone in this family is very talented including this young man. Like his Dad, his interests are many and varied and he excels at all of them. I love all these pictures of them - their laughter and sheer joy of playing together - brings back many memories of playing with my own cousins over the years. I know it is going to be hard to believe but Michael is only 1 year older than Page. Yep - she is a little bit of love. I love how my nephew and his wife have created such a nurturing environment not only for my great-nephew but also for my sister and brother-in-law next door. They are both running over every so often all throughout the day and night to check on everyone and making sure they have everything they need. Ann has loved Lolo since the first time they met and has told me over and over how she is the daughter she always wanted and more. This week, I saw first hand just how true that was. I was so proud of Page for coming in before we left to kiss Ann good-bye. She allowed me to take a picture of them together and then Michael came in and I got this one of both of them. We finally got back on the road headed South and the scenery was even more beautiful than our trip North. No rain!!! The little mountain roads were much easier to drive and as before, the rental car pretty much drove itself. I'm sure I will be sharing more pictures from this trip and the one I'll be making with my sister Ruth in a few months. My nephew also took some of his Dad's old slides (some were pretty damaged) and made a slide show with them. He copied it to a disk and I all but cry every time I look at it. Kurt loved the old pictures and I can't wait for Page1 to see it. Might sneak a few on here later. Or maybe I will sneak a few on this page and see if she recognizes everyone? The one on the left is me and Eileen at the beach when we were both 14. She is the one in the blue suit and I'm in the red one. There are some that are clearer but you can see how tall I am here. Eileen was almost as tall as I was. The one on the right is my beautiful sister Ann right after she and Tad got married. We were all at the coast together - that means she was only 26 here. Isn't she too gorgeous for words? She still is too me and probably always will be - she is my big sister!! Out of the five of us, she is next to the shortest at 5'1". Wasn't BigD gorgeous back then? I'm trying to remember - this is either our senior year in high school or the next year and we had only been married a a few weeks. I almost succeeded but did get a little wordy after all. Got a very busy day ahead of me tomorrow and haven't even unpacked from the trip. As Scarlett said so eloquently...."tomorrow is another day".

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