Reunions within Reunions -1

DAYS 1 and 2   

   With the new concrete, we couldn't drive on the driveway for a week. How fun is that to carry all our food and clothes out on the street to load the cars? Thank you, Amy. Sorry we're old and decrepit.

   Brian Head.

   Four trips up the elevator and Amy and I have most of our stuff in the condo. Since we only had one side the first night, the next day we have to move everything over to the other side; change out the sheets and towels, and all those make-work chores.

   It's worth it.

My naturalist brother, DeLoy, thinks the bird is a 

white-crowned sparrow, perhaps the Gambel's subspecies,

a very high elevation bird.

  

   By Tuesday night, we're all together on the mountain for the first time since 2004. Fifteen of us. A reunion within a reunion. We have one little problem. There are three bathrooms each with half a roll of toilet paper with only one extra roll throughout the condo. When the maid came to clean the big side before we moved in, we told her we were already out of toilet paper. She acted like, "Of course, I'll leave extra toilet paper you dumb clucks." She didn't. We had to buy our own which is against family policy.
   The Big Pugh Reunion is at the Round-Up at Duck Creek. DeRay, Eddy, Amy and I joined them for chicken croissants on Monday night.

DeRay and Jeanette, Ed, Amy.

Brent and Jan, Jonathan, Naomi, Amanda.

Brooke and Elizabeth, Brigitte, Isaak, Klarissa, Karlton.

All Hughs.

Law of Compensation

We do have two or three bikes in the shed that someone may as well be using but when my granddaughter wanted mine when she started college, I suddenly didn’t want to part with it. “Will it be outside? It’s always been in a garage or shed? Maybe I’ll ride again. Oh shoot, you may as well take it. I know you’ll take care of me in my old age.” She didn’t take it and she never asked again.

The Bobbsey Twins

For three mornings now,

Grandpa and Isaak have been working on the sprinkling system.

Imagine my surprise when I came around the corner

to see these two lime green shirts:

"THE BOBBSEY TWINS!" 

Brigitte helped Grandpa on Saturday morning but she had on a red shirt.

   Brother Johnson innocently strolled by with his son

then he came back to help.

How kind is that?

Turquoise and lime compliment, don't you think?

   The Bobbsey Twins series were my favorite novels when I was a child. Twins have always fascinated me and I always wanted to be one.  As it turned out, when we got in junior high and the Alton and Glendale kids joined us, one girl in my class was born on the same day I was.  She was crossed-eyed and freckled face.  She rode down to reunion with us one year. My kids have never forgotten when she told them that she was pretty in two ways: 1) Pretty ugly; and 2) Pretty apt to stay that way.  She was a non-stop talker.  She married well and had a nice family.  Unfortunately, she died of leukemia way too young and I found out on our shared birthday.

The Bobbsey Twins are the principal characters of what was, for many years, the Stratemeyer Syndicate's longest-running series of children's novels, penned under the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope. The first of 72 books were published in 1904, the last in 1979, with a separate series of 30 books published from 1987 through 1992.  The books related to the adventures of the children of the upper-middle-class Bobbsey family, which included two sets of fraternal twins: Nan and Bert, who were 12 years old, and Flossie and Freddie, who were six.

Part II
OK, DeLoy said that help is help no matter what color of shirt they are wearing. Brigitte and Karlton came over this morning and helped with the sprinkling system. "I couldn't have done the sprinkling system without them," DeRay confesses. He did all the heavy thinking and they did the work. Then came again in the evening and helped Grandpa put up bean poles. DeRay said Brigitte did 2/3 of the work. They put up 220 bamboo poles. Karlton cut and Brigitte and Grandpa placed and strung.

     I told Brigitte that it seems only yesterday that she was helping Grandpa in the garden after she was awarded Fairfield Junior High's First Falcon Award #1 Student in the School, as well as Outstanding French Student. Now she's starting her third year at University.

2011

Each year the faculty selects a group of top ninth-graders

who are top scholars, good citizens, and

have participated in a diversity of school activities.

Of the nominees, all outstanding, Brigitte was chosen.