Alabama 2019 - Days 5 & 6 : Grand persons and digging in the dirt

Tuesday 26 November

This is not a sight we would see at home, a vulture walking round a dead animal in the road.  I think the carrion was another bird or a rabbit.  Mauve was fascinated, I was grabbing my phone to record it.

Today's main event is Grandparents day at Robbie's school (Cary Woods). The sign at the entrance was Grand persons day.  Pam had driven Mady, Jo and I to the school, it is only a few minutes away.  Robbie loved showing us around and took us down to the hall to eat.  The Thanksgiving meals were all set up ready to go.  We collected our meals and found a table.  One of Robbies friends sat at the other end of the table and his grandmother kindly offered to take a picture of us.

Here we all are:

On our return, Pam leaves to go to other members of her family for Thanksgiving.  We stay with the children.  First we clear the leaves from the front a little. Then they are playing on the front grass, Mady digging in the dirt.  One of the boys from down the road sees Robbie and comes to play, he is 9 years old. More of his friends arrive, they are older.  A very boisterous ball game gets underway, eventually one of the older boys is hurt, and they all go home - which is a relief for us.

Now all is peaceful and quiet, I can pretend, just as the children are.  My pretence is not Pokemon related, but it might involve digging in the dirt. I'm just enjoying sitting on a verandah in a rocking chair with my faithful dog lying there.  I'm watching my lands, enjoying the late autumn sun, satisfied with a good day and a good season.  Well all the elements are there, and I can dream too, can't I?  It was a lovely day, quite like Mid-September in the UK.

Dinner was home smoked red-snapper, it was delicious. 

Wednesday 27 November

Today is also like mid-September, it is raining hard, so hard water is running out of the gutters.  There will be no walking a dog while it is like that! The rain didn't last long, almost all traces of it were gone in an hour or so.
I looked after the children while Karen and Jo went shopping. We did a little more leaf clearing, it's harder work when the leaves are damp. A guy in a truck stopped and offered his help, I told him we were just playing and were not serious about clearing the leaves.  They are deposited by an Oak and a Sweetgum tree mainly.  Both trees are quite large, so there are lots of leaves.
Mady dug in the dirt again, I think it is her favourite outdoor activity. We had to go out, so I was following instructions to keep her out of the dirt.  She had a melt down when I told her to stop. So, we played games while cleaning her up and her usual pleasant temperament soon returned.
When Karen and Jo got back we loaded ourselves into Karen's car.  There really isn't much room and Jo is stuck (literally) between the two child seats. We are soon at Taco Mama.  Mady is then with Carly, one of the employees and is very happy.  There are all sorts of people in the restaurant, and it soon gets busy, so arriving early was a good choice.  The food is good as always.  Robbie enjoys his meal eating quite a lot.
After lunch, we visit the new bookshop next door.  It is very nicely laid out and has a few nice souvenir type gifts too.  Back home I play with Mauve for a bit, and take her for a walk about 4:15.
Later, we go for dinner at Cracker Barrel.  It's a nice place, but a bit of a disappointment.  Our orders are not delivered properly, Robert's is completely wrong, mine is incomplete, Karen's is overcooked, Jo's is OK.  They sort it out, but it shouldn't have happened.

Washington Day 1 - Spying and Counter Intelligence

Following a busy night we got out of bed early to be ready for the taxi at 7am. Five hours before the flight was due to leave the journey had begun.  Our cab driver rang a couple of minutes before his arrival, which lead to one of those "Oh, no!" moments, thinking that he had gone to the wrong address, because he wasn't outside when we looked.   Brody had already gone to work with Mike.
The cab journey was slow, but only due to the weight of the traffic, so we arrived at the recently re-built Terminal 2 with plenty of time to complete a game of "Check-in Challenge".
There are two sets of machines, one for passengers with check-in luggage and one for those with only carry on bags.  We had to find the ones which provide luggage tags - the second set.  Next, to comply with U.S. Immigration we have to record where we are staying.  Not being good at U.S. geography, nor realising that there are so many small states around Washington, nor understanding the menu system, I needed all three guesses to correctly locate the hotel.   
That completed there is only the absurdity of getting to the gate.  It is, according to the signage, 15 minutes away.  There is a large notice saying not to make your way to 'B' gates until the gate is confirmed.  The gate was due to be confirmed 10 minutes before it opened, to allow 50 minutes for boarding.  Had we and many others not gambled correctly, there would have been no-one at the gate for the first five minutes after it opened.  So it should be no surprise that even in boarding group 4 we were among the first to board.
The flight was routine.  I took "No Cloak, No Dagger" by Benjamin Cowburn to read on the plane.  It is about British Agents in WWII France.  I got about half way through the book by the end of the flight, so far there have been no acts of terrorism (resistance) committed.  It is all about the intrigue, and ensuring the enemy are kept busy with false stories.  For a break from reading I watched "The Imitation Game", the story of Alan Turing breaking the Enigma code.  It is a very well told story.  I had been concerned about the position it might take on Homosexual rights, but this part of Alan's character was not pushed to the forefront of the story.  For me there could have been more of the analytical methods and deductive paths discussed, but that may have lost most of the audience.  Long live the "Turing Machine".  I'm sat at one of them now.
In the early hours of the day Karen and I had agreed that we would meet at Reagan Airport, so once we had cleared immigration we found the Airport shuttle bus and booked our place.  The 15-minute wait to depart felt like ages, but in reality we were soon sitting in the late afternoon Washington rush hour.  We were not in a hurry.  Their plane was not due to land for 4 hours.  On the way we heard there was another 1-hour delay to their flight.
While Dulles Airport looks like something out of the 1970's, Reagan Airport looks like something out of the 1950's, what a contrast they both are to the 2010's Terminal 2.  We wandered around Reagan for a while and found the "Legal Fish Bar", it looked OK, so we decided to eat there.  The food was good, but the airport prices, though expected, were still too high.   We met Karen and her family easily enough and had soon collected their bags and moved outside to wait for the bus to the car rental lot(?).  Standing waiting for the bags, and then the bus I noticed Robbie looking very intently at me, with a look of hard concentration on his face.  He was not sure of us, but he knew he had seen us somewhere before.  I wondered if he was thinking "How did you get out of the screen?"
We picked up the car - a "Chevy Impala".  It is a reverse Tardis - smaller on the inside than it looks.  Robert drove us to the hotel - the TownePlace Suites at Bowie (pronounced Boo-ie here).  It is 30 minutes from Washington.  We all need sleep, but jet lag means that we wake at 3am, after only 3:30 of sleep.  Not a good night.

Leo

Early last week we were waiting patiently for the news.  We had known for a while that it would happen soon, now it seemed the day had arrived, but maybe it would take a long time.  So as with these events is the past I got ready to go to work.  Now there is text messaging, so we received an SMS message and on the strength of what it said cancelled the planned day at work.  On the strength of that we began making our travels.  On the way, another message announced the arrival of Leo. 

We are grandparents!

Wait, isn't that supposed to be for OLD people, that's what I've always thought - grandparents are old people.  (Well except when babies are born to very young parents.)  So, while driving to the hospital I was contemplating being, yet more officially, old. Its not a pleasant thought.

All through the process of driving, parking, queueing to get in to see the baby, I had time to come to terms with the new reality. Then we were there with him.  All thought of age are gone, only wonder remains. A perfect specimen. A handsome boy, doing what babies do - eat, sleep, and create mess.  A proud father and mother, both looking surprisingly fresh, but the it had been a (relatively) easy birth.

We are starting the process of adjusting to the new reality.

We spent the next few days travelling to the hospital to see him.  He was given antibiotics because of a suspected infection and had to stay in to complete the course.  Now he is home, and we are looking forward to seeing him on a regular basis.  We are looking forward to watching him grow.  Already his eyes are changing, and he determinedly pushes himself up to look around.  He loves to study faces.

We are hoping to be good grandparents, and as we get better and better at grand parenting that we may get the title great.