Thursday - our first guests arrive

• another warm, clear, calm morning; temp 70; high today was mid 80s.
• men's breakfast at Taco Fiesta.
• made a True Value run to get rain gutter for Dan & Candy's home.
• Jim went bowling while Diane & I napped.
• met Denise & Nolan at the airport; stopping on the way home for some good Mexican food; guess where? yep, Taco Fiesta.
• and everybody always wants to know what we do in South Texas all winter; recently we ran across an article that describes it very accurately.
• at the request of my daughter, Kathy, I'm including the report - see below.

we can finally get off that airplane.

ooh, you're so sweet.

. . . now, who again is great-uncle Roger?

========================================================================

Written by a third grader, on what his grandparents do.

After Christmas, a teacher asked her young pupils how they spent their holiday away from school. One child wrote the following:

We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live in a big brick house, but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Arizona. Now they live in a tin box and have rocks painted green to look like grass. They ride around on their bicycles, and wear name tags because they don't know who they are anymore. They go to a building called a wreck center, but they must have got it fixed because it is all okay now, they do exercises there, but they don't do them very well. There is a swimming pool too, but they all jump up and down in it with hats on. At their gate, there is a doll house with a little old man sitting in it. He watches all day so nobody can escape. Sometimes they sneak out, and go cruising in their golf carts. Nobody there cooks, they just eat out. And they eat the same thing every night - early birds. Some of the people can't get out past the man in the doll house. The ones who do get out bring food back to the wrecked center for pot luck. My Grandma says that Grandpa worked all his life to earn his retardment and, says I should work hard so I can be retarded someday too. When I earn my retardment, I want to be the man in the doll house. Then I will let people out, so they can visit their grandchildren.

Forward to all your "retarded grandparent" friends. Or just your "retarded" friends.