Our first full day at Fort Bliss

After two failed attempts and 30 wasted minutes trying to load pictures from today, I've given up ... no harm, no foul! They will just have to wait, that's all.

Edit: Some pictures have now been added. Monday, 10/20/08.

Grandpa and I ate lunch with Matthew and Diana, early afternoon, and then we just played away a couple of hours at their house. Matthew showed me all of his treasures and toys in his room. We read books. We played racecars. We built with his megablocks!

Chris's bus arrived home at 2:45. We listened to him talk about his school day and played with the boys in their room. Emma was home at 3:30. It's very nice to see them get off their bus and run to Diana and to us with big smiles and hugs.

Diana was preparing dinner, and while she did that we got all of our playdough stuff out on the kitchen table. We played for nearly two hours. Grandpa joined in the fun as well. Mostly, Grandpa helped Matthew make stuff, roll out playdough and cut animal cookies. Chris and Emma didn't really need any help at all. We cut out pumpkin shapes and made neat faces on them and even added long pretty hair to make girl pumpkins! We made green and blue snowmen with carrot noses and fancy hats!

After our delicious stuffed noodle and garlic bread dinner, I showed Emma all of the pig books I brought to read to her. We read two Josalina Piggy books. We read a great book about a pig named Amanda and how much she loved school. We read a very abridged version of Charlotte's Web, about Fern and her pet pig, Wilbur. And we also read about a boy pig who had a lot of trouble waking up in the mornings ... Emma was very excited to read this book because she told me she does not like to get up early for school and sometimes she is grumpy in the mornings!

I think the best part of the day, though, was hearing Emma do her homework. She had reading homework for the weekend and Diana let Emma do it with me. So we went to Emma's room and she read me four early-reader books. She is doing very well with her reading skills, sounding out words she doesn't know. I loved listening to her and watching her work at learning new words.

Tomorrow is Saturday. No school! We have tentative plans to go back to the ranch we visted a year ago to see the animals there. It's a short drive just outside El Paso and it is a beautiful place ... totally free too :)

At this point, almost two-thirds of our trip is over. How does time pass this quickly? Grandpa Jones and I are feeling quite travel fatigued; but we are so thankful to be able to see all of our Texas families and make some more happy memories together. I'll try again tomorrow to load pictures

Emma's pink playdough pumpkin with long hair!