All Things Anne

Friday was another non-busy day, so guess what we did? Went places! We took Paul and went to the Guitar center, where we dropped off Dad, Paul, Ben, Joe, the twins, and Tess; then the rest of us went to Goodwill, where we saw Aunt Jeanie and Uncle Earl! Aunt Jeanie had said the day before she hoped to see us before we left, and there she did! After Goodwill, we went back to the Guitar Center to see if Dad and the kids were done (our phones were roaming in Oregon so we didn’t use them; Papa gave Dad his phone to use, but there was only one!). They weren’t, but Aunt Laurie’s old boyfriend Leo was there, with his wife, and we talked to him for a little bit, then went to Costco. After that, we picked up the ones at the Guitar Center, then went to Grandpa’s.

After dinner, the boys and John and Paul went bowling, and were gone until like 1 am!

Dad, Beth, and I went to Grandpa’s store to get some parts for installing grab handles near the garage door in the morning, and the boys (including John and Paul) went to look at the train yard. Some older fellas had brought some neat old cars to take pictures of next to the one engine they fired up.

Cool old cars
Cool train pic

Cool train pic
Cool train pic

Thursday was a fairly non-busy day, which was pretty nice!

Early in the morning, the boys went golfing. Ben was his own caddy, Eric caddied for Paul (the golfing expert in the family), John took his own too, and Joe was photographer.

Ben on the left, Eric with Paul’s bag in the middle, and Paul on the right

Ben, with the club he used through the whole thing. An exercise on how not to play golf is as follows:

Stay stiff
Swing like you are playing baseball.

Dance!
Paul’s feet. Note the dirt from a scuff? That’s where Ben whacked.

And then, Paul, showing us how to do it the right way!

Beautiful form
No dancing!
Joe’s self-portrait

Later that day, we went to Grammoo’s and Papa’s, after the boys got home. It was Papa’s birthday, so we had a cake for him, and he opened his presents. Uncle David, Aunt Fran, and Cody came, too.

Joe pogo’ing, Ben in black watching, Jay’s the short one, also watching
Cody, testing out his pogo stick skills…Joe and Ben watching

Papa with the shirt Uncle David’s family gave him, and the chocolates we gave him

On Tuesday we hung out at Grammoo and Papa’s, then in the late afternoon, we went to the Manor, picked up John Wayne, and went to Panda Buffet (Grammoo and Papa followed us). John Wayne was so funny; on Sunday he said us girls would have to wear elastic-waisted skirts, because he expected us to eat a lot! He said we all had to have at least three plates, to get his money’s worth.

On the way there, we saw some cool cars…

I like that blue one best
The black one is cool
I like this black one next though

…and welcome to Portland and all its traffic! Ew. ‘Busy’ on our road is more than four non-neighbor cars in a day! Rush hour is like 20 cars in a line. This was just awful! Stop and go lights on the freeway? Bizarre! Ok, so we sound like country hicks. Really, guys, there IS a life outside the city! (Not to mention, the air is better and there’s less strange people! But then again, strange people are interesting to observe!)

John Wayne is also a follower of Jesus Christ, which was pleasant to find out!
He was very interesting. One of his plates was a plate of fried shrimp. He ate the shrimp and left the bready stuff; he said the bready stuff filled him up too much and the shrimp was the expensive part! At one point, after we’d all finished and were stuffed, the cooks brought in a new dish, and he insisted we all had to try it, and it had to be all gone or the cooks would be upset! So we had some, and it WAS good! (What’s the superlative of “stuffed”? Whatever it was, we were it!) Then we took some pictures!

All of us, John Wayne, and Papa
John Wayne (on the left) and Dad

Grammoo, Papa, and John Wayne