Wednesday, November 25, 2009

A Day of Delight

Here it is late November, and Elaine's flower beds are in  full bloom at her home on Lake Pontchartrain. I was lucky enough to be left at Elaine and Bub's when Rachel, Rebecca, Scott, Buffy, and Bub went grocery shopping for Thanksgiving fixings. This gave me a full afternoon in one of my favorite places on earth with three of my grandchildren, Nicholas, Sarah and Miya.

Nick and Sarah began by serenading me with saxaphone music, as they're currently both studying the same instrument. Sarah then played tunes on Elaine's piano and began tutoring Miya in music reading. This was before Sarah and Miya decided to go peddle boating, leaving me and Nick to enjoy the cool salt air breezes from the swing on the dock.

While I stayed to watch the girls, Nicholas went in and made himself a grilled cheese sandwich. While he was gone, Sarah and Miya managed to foul the propellor so badly I needed to affect a rescue. Watching me attempt to throw the rescue ring got lots of laughs from my granddaughters.
Upon Nick's return to the boat dock, he discovered that I was in the process of rescuing Sarah and Miya, and decided to offer his assistance. The next thing I knew, Nick was chasing Bub's white German Shepherd puppy around the yard, throwing shoes and yelling at the puppy for eating his sandwich off the plate that Nick had left on the table. I managed to get the girls, but had to abandon the boat until help arrived. I made Nick another grilled cheese sandwich. He ate, watched a bit of TV and fell asleep.

While Nick slept, his cousin Sarah decided to enlist her cousin Miya in a project of squeezing all of Bub's oranges into fresh-squeezed orange juice. Since we could find no juice squeezer, we improvised with an overturned ribbed cocktail glass in a glass bowl. The girls had great fun with this, but it must have tired Miya, as she curled up in my lap for me to rock her and sing to her. She promptly fell asleep in my arms, at which time Sarah continued her piano serenade. I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.

Upon her return, Rebecca went with me to retreive the peddle boat. She detangled the line from the prop while I held the boat up. I enjoyed sharing with Rebecca wonderful memories of our years at Richard's and my house on the lake as we peddled together back to Bub's dock.

At the end of the day, I was able to begin the Thanksgiving Feast food preparations with Rachel and Buffy. My days don't get more delightful than this.