Twilight's Latest Adventures

Twilight has been quite the busy dog lately and wanted her own blog post today.

While I was on vacation, Twilight spent time at the homes of two of my co-workers.

For the first few days, Twilight hung with Megan Pedersen and her partner Trina and their dogs, cats and other pets. Megan is one of Twilight's favorite people at work and had a blast there.

The last several days, Twilight then moved to Matt Francis' house. Matt has three boys that want a dog, but his wife is not too fond of having a full time pet. However, Twilight was very spoiled by the boys and had a great time at their house.



I must admit it made my heart glow to come in to work on Monday and have Twilight come running to me in joy across the office. I could tell she also adores Matt now and will want to go to the office even more to see her buddies.

Jennifer, Elise and I found this cute Harley Davidson jacket for Twilight on River Street in Savannah. (I need to buy the matching hat at PetsMart). Twilight doesn't like the zippers on her legs yet, but looks awefully cool in her new duds. Where is the Fonz now?

My nephew Jon and his wife Janilee just got a new dachsund puppy, Joey the other week. They are moving from a condo to a house today, so we are babysitting Joey. Kevin had fun with both dogs earlier and they are enjoying teasing each other and playing together.

Grandmother training

After Jeremy and Jennifer got custody of Elise and Brad, I decided to take my remaining vacation time to go to Georgia and visit with them. The trip had two primary purposes: 1) To be a support system to my daughter and 2) To get to know my grandchildren.

When Jenn and Jeremy got married in 2006, I got to meet Brad and Elise, but was worried that I would never get to know them and get them to feel I was their grandmother. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to make some changes with that.

The trip started off a little bit stressful as Savannah, Georgia received it's first snowfall in more than a decade. All the flights out of Atlanta were cancelled and all the hotels were full, so I rented a car and drove 6 white-knuckle hours across the state.

With the kids not yet enrolled in school, there was a lot of time to get to know them and to spoil them. I did my best to do many different things with them and had a great time with my family.

On Sunday, Jennifer, Elise and I drove into historical Savannah, Georgia. Elise admitted she loves taking pictures and seeing old buildings and Jenn was excited to have someone to take trips with in the future to do the tourist and photo bit.

We parked and walked on River Street. Lots of neat stores and we checked out a lot of them. There was a pirate ship parked on the docks and we took a tour of the ship and had some neat pictures taken there.

The best thing about River Street - candy stores! I think we all went crazy in the Savannah Candy Store. Yummy tastes and smells. I can still think and smell the scent of the pralines and pecans.




During the week we made bread, cooked together, blew bubbles, celebrated Valentine's Day, built model cars and rockets, and played video games.

On Friday afternoon, Jeremy came home early from work and Jennifer and I took off for a couple of hours alone together. We went back to River Street and also found some wonderful barbecue at Sticky Fingers restaurant. (It was divine! Finger licking good!).




I had seen this stained glass window in the very first store we stopped at on Sunday. It never left my mind, so went back and bought it. I can't wait to have it delivered and hang it up on my landing over my desk.



Friday night we made homemade pizzas and had our own video games Olympics. Everyone had a blast together and all cooperated and won not only monetary rewards for medals but these delicious candied apples for being good sports.



Saturday night I took my grandkids out on a date to Golden Corral and Jennifer and Jeremy also went out on a date together.

My entire vacation was made when both kids came and hugged me goodnight when they went to bed on Saturday night. I sure grew to love these kids in a short period of time and am thrilled to have actively experienced being a grandma.

Running in Georgia

I took a vacation this month down to visit family in Richmond Hill, Georgia. While there I had some great runs.

Right outside my daughter's subdivision is the Coastal Highway. It has a nice shoulder - include a lot of grassy sections - that I could run on. I took a couple of runs to and from Walmart and had my grandkids riding alongside on bikes at times. Brad really enjoyed riding and talking with me and would push me a little to speed up.

It was nice to run in slightly warmer weather and at lower altitudes. The roads there are very flat, so it made for easier running than out here.

What I enjoyed the most about running out there was the different vegetation and views. Lots of swampy and sandy areas, a bamboo farm, oak trees, palm trees. Even though it was February I was able to enjoy lots of greenery.

I hope to go back either later this year or in 2011 and do a marathon in Georgia or Florida.

The one thing I regret - I didn't get any running in with my daughter.

Tybee Island

I had heard about a half marathon in February on Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia. Unfortunately, my trip to Georgia was a week too late to run this half marathon.

Jeremy told me that Brad and Elise wanted to go to the beach and I wanted to get some lighthouse pictures for my sister, so on President's Day we loaded up the car and drove out to Tybee Island.

It was a windy, cool day. Not a great day to be at the beach, but a beautiful day. The kids immediately stripped off their shoes, rolled up their pants and headed across the beach to the ocean. That water was freezing! My feet hurt the minute I stepped into the water. Elise seems to have totally impervious feet and spent a lot of time wading. The rest of us were quite wussy in comparison.





Of course, as things go with kids and beaches, even though you don't plan on getting wet, you do. We ended up having to buy some sweat pants for each of the kids since their pants got pretty soaked.

After lunch, we headed over to the other side of the island to check out the Tybee Island Lighthouse. We decided to climb to the top of the lighthouse and got a good leg workout, beautiful views, and some great pictures.