Saturday, March 29, 2008

Trip to Oregon- Part Four, Visiting Grandparents

We spent about an hour of each day during our trip visiting my Grandma and Grandpa Ballard (an hour a day is all my kids could handle being couped up in the retirement center, and it was all my grandparents could handle of my kids). They are doing reasonably well for their ages (Grandpa in now 94, and Grandma is 92). Grandpa is a little hard of hearing, and he uses his nebulizer frequently (we call it his peace pipe). He also fell recently, but is slowly recovering and can get around pretty well with the use of his walker. Grandma is still a pretty forgetful, but not as bad as I was expecting. It was wonderful to see them again, but it is getting harder to say goodbye with each visit because I don't know if will be the last time I see them.




Here's grandpa using his "peace pipe". Molly was very concerned about his "smoking" habit.













This is one of the few pictures we could get of Grandma Ballard smiling. She really enjoyed the attention and company, even is she doesn't always remember who we are.
This spider and rat were the only toys for the kids to play with at my grandparents (they were left over from some Halloween decorations). Jake stole the camera during one of the visits and took some great pictures- I especially liked Luke doing bunny ears on the rat. I swear I can see great things for my boys in the future!

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