FALL TEXAS TRIP: Day 9

We are now sadly at the end of our El Paso visit. I did a terrible job getting pictures of Jes and Di together! But at least I got a few pictures of them individually today. Would you like a medical update on Jesse? If I understand it correctly, the physicians have gone from thinking his severe headaches were something brain-related, then neck related, and now perhaps a combination of neck and eye maladies. Jesse has a very complicated prescription for his eyes. He has worn glasses since the second grade. He is on some new medication that he says is helping with the pain in his head, so ... that's good! His physical therapy appointment today went well too ... so perhaps these headaches will soon be a thing of the past.

We enjoyed another good day today with all of the family. It's odd to have all three of the children in school full time ... like ... all day long. So we don't see them until about 3:20 in the afternoon. We've been joining Diana each afternoon for the walk home from school. Little Sophie came along for the walk today. See the beautiful mountains that they get to see every single day?

Here is Grandpa Jones chatting with Emma about her school day.

And this is Matthew and his friend, Yuna, who lives around the block from him.

This is the house Jes and Di have moved to. It's a much nicer house than their prior one and is laid out much more conveniently for everyone. They now have four bedrooms, one of which is being used as a combination office, spare room, playroom kind of place.

Here is Matthew showing me where the kiddos put their shoes away when they come home from school. Hanging the shoes up keeps Sophie (the dog) from grabbing them and hiding them ... who knows where?

We had a simple but yummy meal of cinnamon-swirl french toast, scrambled eggs and sausage for dinner tonight, followed by chocolate pudding and cookies. Emma made her dessert into a rabbit ... can you see?

Oh! I guess I did snap ONE picture of Jes and Di together! I loved being able to share meals, sit around the table and talk about ... all kinds of stuff.

After supper, we grabbed my game tote bag and headed to Emma's room to play! Grandpa Jones joined us for awhile and beat the socks off us in any game we were playing!

Christopher enjoyed my Think it Through Tiles game (Discovery Toys) and got all of the answers correct!

But the highlight each night has been story time. I brought an entire crate of children's books along with me and each night I let the children pick out one story each that I would read. We have had such fun interacting with these great books. Tonight, Emma picked out one called: "Little Pig, Big Trouble," a darling story about a very mischievous pig named, Henri, and his friend (a little boy) Pierre. Christopher picked out the story of Esther (from the Bible). I have a great children's edition of this story with beautiful illustrations. And Matthew picked out an old favorite, a rather silly little children's story about a cow who only knows how to say "OINK" and a pig who can only say "MOO" and how they help each other out.

We said our good-byes. It helped that I could tell them I was returning in early December, just me this time, to stay for hopefully a week. We talked about all of the good stuff we would do when I visit next ... it helps to talk about happy stuff rather than think about NOT being together.

Tomorrow, Grandpa Jones and I take the LONG drive east across Texas. We hope to "land" in Austin tomorrow evening in time to see our granddaughter, Olivia, play her flute in the high school (!) marching band. And then Saturday, we hope to spend the day with Nick and Rachel and the grandchildren in Bandera. It is very doubtful that I will post any updates for the next few days. We are going to have a few late nights in a row and we will not be staying in a hotel, but actually staying at Sabrina's ... so it would be quite rude to spent the evening loading pictures to this little blog when I should be visiting. But hopefully by Monday, I will continue showing pictures of our days here in Texas. Until then ...