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West Virginia
When I started my retirement travels in 2009, I wanted a way to share it with family and friends as it was happening. Hence, "My Travel Journal". However I realized I wouldn't always be on a trip and wondered what to do with the blog in between times. My daughter pointed out, wisely, that travels can also include trips to the kitchen to try a new recipe, trips to visit family, trips to my neighborhood Starbucks, or a fun day trip with a friend. You're welcome to join me on any of these journeys! I've set up individual pages for each of my major trips (see tabs above).

Also, I have an Etsy shop where my current needlework resides. The last pieces I posted here were in 2013! So if you'd like to see what I have accomplished recently, go to (and I apologize for having to copy and paste):

www.etsy.com/shop/thedollhouseneedle

I recently added an "Italian Word a Day" thingie which shows up at the bottom of every page. You see the word and can click to hear it pronounced. I've been enjoying it and I think my accent is improving as time goes by.

July 05, 2010

Heather and Sophia Come for a Visit

4th of July weekend turned out to be a real "bang" for me. My daughter Heather and granddaughter Sophia came over to see me! Got here late Friday night - actually probably closer to 1:00 a.m. Saturday and are going home tomorrow probably soon after lunch. It was partly a visit to let Sophia see where I live before she perhaps comes for a visit by herself. She sees her brother Johnny doing that and thinks she wants to do it too, but I thought before she did, it would be good for her to come with her mama so when she came to stay by herself, it wouldn't all be strange to her.

We've had a real nice visit I think. I wish the weather had stayed as perfect as it was on Wednesday and Thursday before they got here but it has been progressively hotter so we did swelter a bit. First thing we did Saturday was go to Tudor's Biscuits for "the world's finest pancakes" (Johnny's and my opinion). Sophia enjoyed them and so did we! Then it was over to Ashland, KY to a shop I had seen when there with a friend. It's a shop especially for little girls and it's called "Sophia's"! I thought that was pretty neat and Sophia liked her visit there because the owner mixed her up some lotion that had glitter and stars in it and she's been rubbing that on her arms ever since. I keep seeing little specks of glitter and twinkling stars here and there around the apartment and know I will keep coming across them for a while which will be a nice little reminder of our visit. We knew we were going to go out for a nice dinner Saturday evening, and we'd had our pancakes kind of late in the morning, so no lunch. We just went to the river and fed the ducks and got to see lots of little baby ducks which was fun. Then went over to the big locomotive "parked" at Heritage Station where Sophia enjoyed climbing around on it (just like her brother Johnny).






We visited some of the shops here in town that weren't here when Heather last visited and Heather and Sophia got to do a little shopping which they both enjoy.  Then back home to collapse from the heat for a while before heading out to dinner at Huntington Prime where we had a very enjoyable but way too filling meal.  Came back home, went up to the roof for one more look around (that was the very first thing Sophia wanted to do when she woke up in the morning) and then it was off to bed for her and after we recovered a little from our meal, a video and some cards for Heather and me.  While we were playing cards, great explosions began and went on for quite a while and I had the sinking feeling that Huntington had apparently decided to have their fireworks display on July 3 instead of July 4 when we had planned on watching them from the roof.  Really was a disappointment and frustrating because I had even called the Mayor's office to make sure that they were indeed going to be on Sunday and had been told yes. 

We thought Sophia was probably too young to remember today that she was supposed to see fireworks tonight and we were right.  We didn't say anything about missing them and she didn't ever mention them either.

This morning we did the Starbucks thing and by the time we left there it was already uncomfortably warm.  Made a trip to the grocery store so I could fix dinner tonight and when we got back home went to Hillbilly Hotdogs to introduce Sophia to the finer things in life.

We didn't eat in the bathtub but it's always good for a picture!

Sophia was really intrigued by what she called "that zombie" but when I said let's go take your picture, she really didn't want to get into that corner with the zombie, so I had to go and protect her. :)

After lunch we went to the paint-your-own-pottery place and Sophia and Heather both painted a piece while I worked the Sunday crossword.  Came back home and rested up from our labors a little and then out to Best Buy because Heather needed a charger for her camera battery and a new case for her phone.  Hadn't been driving long when Heather looked in the mirror and saw this:

And she was really gone - we had to work at getting her awake when we got to the store, poor little thing...

Now, today is Monday and Heather and Sophia are on their way home.  Hated to see them go!  They didn't leave til around 2:00 which was nice for me but will get them home a little later than Heather hoped, most likely.  We had another wander around Pullman Square, a little shopping, and then lunch at Five Guys and off they went.   About 20 minutes after they left, the phone rang and it was Heather who was downstairs and had forgotten to take her cellphone!  At least they hadn't traveled very far - would have been awful to discover even as little as an hour into the trip.  I took just a couple more pics of Sophia this morning cause she just looked so darned cute with her little backpack.  Don't know why she felt she needed to take that on our outing, but she did.



The visit doesn't make for a fascinating report, but it was so enjoyable...partly just having someone visiting me instead of me doing the visiting, partly because when I visit Heather, she's busy with her work, her household, etc., and is one tired girl at the end of the day, but mainly because they're both so delightful and kept me laughing most of the weekend.

2 comments:

Christopher said...

Such a cutie, my little niece! Sounds like a great visit despite the short time. Perhaps I'd better come over at labor day since I think you have photos of everyone in that big train except me... ;)

Unknown said...

And Sophia's pigtails are so darned cute too! It made me hot to look at her long, long hair on the day you visited the train... where, ahem, I've never had my picture taken either. Glad they could come to visit and it looks like they had a plenty good time despite the weather. And now if Chris comes for Labor Day.... WOW, you should be one happy mom! xoxo

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