Grandpa's visit!

My dad was able to come out and visit for a few days to see the new digs and the kiddos, and we kept him busy! It was great to get to see him, he is such an awesome, terrific, fantastic grandpa. He was always on the floor playing with the kids, making Nathan laugh, listening to Meredith and just generally making everyone feel special. I love my dad!

Since our new house is perfect in every way except for the lack of a guest bedroom, my dad slept in the twin bed in Nathan's room. Unfortunately Nathan is cutting 7 new teeth right now. (Ouch!) He was up all night long the second night my dad was here, screaming bloody murder. We tried all the tricks I have up my sleeve all night long, and eventually little Bear fell asleep on top of me in our bed. Because of the screaming child, nobody slept very well on Thursday night, but my dad was wonderful about helping me survive on Friday.

Saturday we went to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. It is really well done, and we explained it to Meredith as we went through it. She did very well and asked many wonderful questions. I was impressed with how respectful she was of it, and glad that they have a kids area with rescue workers clothing, computers, pictures etc. to help children understand what happened. I'll post more about this later, it was a moving experience. Saturday evening we went ot Stillwater for the OSU/Grambling game and we had a lot of fun there. My dad wore orange and enjoyed being at a college game, and the Grambling band was fun to watch. The football games are better in my opinion when the teams are more evenly matched, it was not very exciting to watch since Grambling is not anywhere close to the Big 12 quality of football. But we all had fun, and Mere and Bear really liked walking around in the stadium. The whole way home my dad and Meredith hung out in the back talking and playing, it was so sweet to listen to them together. Meredith wrote my dad's name, address and phone number down for him, which was funny because until he pointed it out we couldn't tell what it was. She is in the stage of not spacing her words accurately, which is cute to watch!

Sunday morning we got up and headed to the state fair. We watched Matt and Meredith climb the rock wall, ride the ferris wheel, do the fun house, bumper cars and throw darts, and had a great time. There were animals (Nathan sniffs every time he sees any animal, he isn't quite into the sounds they make even though we try! I think it's hilarious because really, when a dog sees him, they do sniff instead of bark!), rides, fried foods (yep, my dad fulfilled his lifelong dream of trying a deep fried twinkie. Nothing special, by the way.) and lots of people watching. We headed home so everyone could nap, and then had a nice family evening at home. My dad is now on his way back to Arizona, and I miss him already.