New Adventure for Grandpa and Me

Last night when I left work I was shocked to see the sun shining and no rain. So instead of heading to the gym, I thought I'd see if Grandpa wanted to get his bicycle out for a little ride. Then I thought, "we ought to use our bike trailer and take a grandchild with us." The bike trailer can fit two smaller children, which we've done with the twins, who are now 6 1/2 years old, but it would be a tight squeeze now. The problem was, all three of our grandchildren live in the same house with the same set of parents. How do I take only one? So I called their mother, my daughter and told her what I was thinking of doing, but that I couldn't decide how to choose only one. She put it to the grandkids. I could hear all kinds of screams of excitement and discussion. She came back and said that granddaughter #1 figured out a plan--she was the oldest by 20 minutes so she would go first, followed by her twin sister, and then their little brother. Sounded like a good plan, kind of how I worked out years ago which one of my brats children got to ride in the front seat (can you believe we used to let them ride in the front seat with no car seat ) with me and which one had to ride in the backseat--child #1 was born on an even date and child #2 was born on an odd date, so #1 rode in the front seat on even days and #2 rode in the front on odd days.

Back to last night...we got there to pick up granddaughter #1 and all of them were in a good mood although they all said they wanted to go to. We promised them we would take them today and tomorrow. So we did our little bike ride, picked some flowers, caught some bugs, and then went to eat at #1's choice: Fazoli's. (Did I forget to mention we washed our hands first?) She was a little on the fidgety side at first, not knowing what to do with herself without her sister, but was also eating up the two-on-one time, chatting away, cuddling with Grandpa, and playing with her food. You would have thought we were at a fine dining restaurant with seven courses--we were there for over an hour and a half! Grandpa and I just kept looking at each other smiling, glad that we had taken the steps to spend some quality time with her. She also wanted to go get ice cream at a place in an adjoining town where her other grandparents live. As it so happened her parents and siblings were there visiting so I asked her if she would like to have them join us, which she smiled big time and shook her head yes. So after a phone call, we all met there and as soon as she saw her twin, they were in each other's arms hugging and dancing away. You would have thought they hadn't seen each other in weeks instead of 3 1/2 hours.

I meant to take my camera and can't believe I forgot it. Going to take granddaughter #2 today, but since I didn't take my camera yesterday, I can't do it today--got to keep it fair.