And so this is Christmas ’08, Part VII
And so, the final installment for Christmas this year, we end with the rest of our time with Grandma Sue, Uncle Chris and Aunt Annie! (I want to thank you guys for carting us around and your hospitality, as well as the Holiday generosity!) We begin right after we got back from visiting Great Grandma Betty…
December 28th… I read Chris scores to the Giants’ game as we headed back north. When we got back Ian needed some entertaining. See this image larger.
“Have you seen what this speedometer goes up to Uncle Chris?” See this image larger.
We weren’t getting enough smiles out of Ian at the moment, so I told Uncle Chris to give Ian a toss in the air. Not sure if that screwed up his back… See this image larger.
… but we did get a nice smile out of the deal! That night, we had planned on cruising back up to Grandma Sue’s, but ran out of energy. Uncle Chris offered up that we could stay another night, and we jumped on the idea. Ian had another bad night… he was so far off routine, you could tell he didn’t know what to do. The next morning we hit the road back to The Villages as Chris went off to work. See this image larger.
The night of the 29th we went to one of the Squares to meet up with Vicki and Joe, and Grandma Sue got the dance she’d been thinking about for a good long time. See this image larger.
We only had a few days left with Grandma Sue after our traveling adventures. Here Ian awakens happily at her place and watches a little TV. I think it was this night that Melissa and I got to just sit and talk in the hot tub. That was really great, and relaxing. There was also a night when Ian and Melissa and I got to go out again in a golf-cart and check out the lights. I think Ian will always wonder where all the golf carts are when he sees Christmas lights anywhere. See this image larger.
His feet are still cute, and I can say that — I’m not a big fan of feet. See this image larger.
The evening before we had to head back, and Ian starts really boogieing to the band with Grandma Sue! See this image larger.
It was also great that Ian got to see the whole Johnson/Kunze crew again at dinner that final night of the trip. Here again Ian rocks out! See this image larger.
The one spoiler of the evening was the handrail in the background of that shot. Ian sat down and lulled Melissa into sitting next to him, then he stood up as fast as he could and ran for three steps before hitting that handrail with his head so hard that it knocked him back on the bricks. Looking at it, I got a little miffed. How far out does that need to extend? (More on this in a second.)
Grandma Sue dropped us off at the airport the next morning and away we flew. We had a rough flight home. Ian was not happy and not much could keep him pacified. (My iPhone helped a lot, though.) Will it be better when he has his own seat? He wanted to sit on a lap, and then wanted to run down the aisle (which we did not let him do, of course) and then to sit on the floor of the plane.
We got home after a long drive… and were amazed the next morning when Ian was perfectly back on schedule. He had been so far off during the trip that we expected there to be a readjustment period.
I think staring at the above pictures long enough motivated me to write The Villages and tell them how I felt about their handrails, in as kind a tone as I could take. I got a letter back telling me they had moved flower-pots under the handrails. I figured they were just trying to placate me, but Grandma Sue called me that night to tell me she spotted the moved pots, and wondered how The Villages knew to fix it. So I told her my side of the story and we both had a laugh. Nice to know they’re on top of things! (Turns out, by the way, he never even got much of a bruise on that hit, not sure how he managed that.)
And so that was Christmas ’08!
