A Great Time!

Well, summer has almost come and gone and with it vacations and family trips too!  Our summer was relatively eventful.  Mark and Meghan celebrated their 1st anniversary and have weathered the first year of marriage quite well.  Anita and I, along with Meghan's mom and dad, Steve and Donna, are all so glad they "found" each other!  The summer also saw me start a new job in San Antonio, as a senior project manager on the renovation of the existing Brook Army medical Center and the addition of a new 8-story hospital tower.  I love the job, but do not enjoy being away from Anita all week.  We are pretty unsettled about what we should do and where we should live.  With our financial situation, we will be looking to sell the house and downsize this fall/winter.  So we await what God has for us.  He has led us through some amazing paths over the past several months, reinforcing what Anita says, "Life is hard, but God is good!" 

I think Anita would agree, that the best part of our summer was the visit by our daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons.  They spent a little over 2 weeks with us and we had lots of fun and made lots of memories!  Alicia decided to drive out to our home, from King's Bay, Georgia and she asked Meghan to come and travel with she and the boys.  Tim was limited in the time he could spend away from the Navy.  Meghan and Alicia drove for two days and arrived at our house on a Saturday afternoon, with two little boys who were ready to be out of their car seats!  The good news was that Aunt Meghan probably loved Mark and Luke even more after her trip than before!  Over the next two weeks, we had lots of good bedtime stories, trips to the pool, fun with the pellet gun, an outing to the lake with Papaw and Uncle Mark, a ride on the light rail and visit to the aquarium, snow cones and ice cream!  Best of all, I got to spend pretty much all day and evening on the weekends, with all of them.  One of the best times of the day for Papaw is bath-time and bed-time!  It is interesting that when they are at Mimi's house, they believe that Papaw is the one who should bathe them and put them to bed...so I do!  As Mark would say, they have both gotten a little bit tricky now.  They know which stories take longer to read and they also know that Papaw will read until Mimi or Mommy tells him to stop, which usually happens after the fourth or fifth story!  We also usually have to sing a song for each of them.  Sometimes Mark will choose a hymn, but sometimes he will ask for the "Aggie song" (for the non-Aggies, that means the Spirit of Aggieland!)  He will sing along with me and never miss a word.  He also knows and sings all the hymns he requests.  Luke is not quite up to Carnegie Hall performance standards yet, but he does know "Nothing But The Blood!" and he sings it with gusto!  After reading and prayers (Mark prays that God will take away "mine and Lukie's heart of stone and give us a new heart of flesh!") each one gets tucked in.  Luke likes to have me tuck in "Jake, Big Monkey and Widdle Monkey" and then he likes to have his back rubbed for just a minute.  Mark sleeps with Jake (yes they each have a Jake bear) and usually a car if he can get it past Mom or Mimi.  He also sleeps with an iPod playing his "night-nights music."  He likes for Papaw to "lie down and snuggle with me for just a minute or two."  As I leave, I always tell him, "No matter what happens, always remember that you had a Papaw who loved you no matter what!"  He responds the same way, every night...he looks at me and smiles and says, "Me too, Papaw!"  I can't resist either one of them!

I also got to spend time with my daughter and son-in-law and we all got to "meet" our soon-to-be-born grand-daughter.  She is not a big fan of her two big brothers climbing all over her Mommy's tummy and she usually responds by kicking back!  September should be interesting around the Williamson house!

All in all, it was a great time and we fell blessed beyond measure!  We Love you Mark and Meghan!  We love you Alicia and Tim!  And, Mark and Luke and Baby Girl Williamson, always remember that you have a Mimi and Papaw that love you no matter what!