Heidlebeere has been expecting; that's always exciting when a new grandbaby comes along. For a couple of reasons, this was considered a high risk pregnancy so everyone had been watching pretty close as things have been developing, hoping the little kid would make it full term. If fact, Brombeere and Heidlebeere decided Brombeere would go out a little early in the hope of being there when the young child made an appearance in the world. So she flew out a week before I drove out; we'll come back to that in a minute.
It turned out for the best that Brombeere flew out early, this little cutie was born just a few days later. Number 16 had safely arrived.
Everybody was excited, it was a much anticipated event. Daddy was pretty happy for the new arrival, as was everybody else.
All the siblings came to visit in the hospital. Brand new babies probably do more sleeping while being held than while laying in a crib. This little kid was no different.
Meanwhile, I had stayed behind so I could attend a concert. The new arrival's aunt was singing in a choir
again and I wanted to attend. But the day after the concert, which was every bit as good as ever, I took off for points west.
I made it fine and got to meet the new arrival and then we went to see Moosbeere and his family.
We wanted to give Heidelbeere and her family a little time to get acquainted with the new baby. The plan was to spend most of the time this trip with Heidelbeere and her family helping out but here and there we would run over to visit Moosbeere and his family. So during this time we got to spend a day going to baseball games the kids were involved in.
It was fun, a whole day in the sun watching grandkids having fun, playing baseball. Enough to get a little bit of a sunburn. Isn't that what summer is all about?
And they all did real well. It was a good day.
The sports complex where all the games were held also had big lights on the fields. A pair of osprey had taken advantage of the tall lights to build a nest and they also spent some time watching the games.
Mama was on the nest while papa watched from atop one of the other set of lights. They were a distraction to those of us trying to watch the games.
After a few days with Mossbeere and his family we went back to Heidelbeere's place to spend some more time with them while they figured out the new schedule and routine.
Babies don't come with directions, they just expect everything to fall in place. You know how it is.
They didn't want to take the baby out to church quite yet, not with all the oohing and ahhing and all that jazz that normally goes on the first time a new baby comes to church, but there were people who had come from out of town so they did want to have the blessing pretty quick, before all the crowd dispersed again. That, plus the next Sunday was Mother's Day and they didn't want to detract from all that, so they got permission to hold the blessing on the Saturday before. So a large crowd of family from both sides gathered for a very nice naming and blessing ordinance and a little family get-together afterward at the church. It was nice time.
We had also decided to go visit Brombeere's sister who live in Arizona. It had been a long time since we'd seen her and it would never be any closer so we decided to take a few days and make the trek.
This also gave us the opportunity to see the Grand Canyon, which neither of us had ever visited before. On our way down we stopped at the Navajo Bridge outside of Marble Canyon, Arizona. This was actually our best view of the Colorado River, which carves along the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Even at this point, it's impressive. The bridge is actually over the Glen Canyon; the Grand Canyon is further to the west.
We had a good visit and did a lot of catching up. It was only a few hours but it was a good visit.
Then it was time to head back north, which was when we stopped at the Grand Canyon. It's an impressive place. The north rim was still closed, which is the main reason we stopped on the way back, so we could go to the south rim.
All the pictures I had ever seen didn't do it justice.
As we drove north toward it everything looked like normal, arid desert country.
And then suddenly there was this big hole in front of us.
We took a shuttle that was available along the south rim so we were able to view the canyon from several different vantage points, it was amazing.
Lots of sunshine but the elevation, up on the rim of the canyon, kept it from being real hot. That was nice.
We saw lots of wildlife there, too. And much of it was pretty tame. The squirrels were all over and not very afraid.
We saw several elk, they had no fear. The shuttle driver told us that as long as you didn't approach them and get too close, the elk didn't mind having people around at all. After riding around on the shuttle all over the south rim, we drove east along the rim back to the road that went around the canyon, stopping here and there at various vantage points to take in the view.
Heading back home we saw lots of cactus, for which Arizona is famous.
It was all over the place.
We stopped at a small park that had a nature walk out among the cactus. Unfortunately, it was also out in the heat so we didn't spend a long time out there. Then it was back on the way north.
While we were out west visiting, Brombeere spent time with two of the grandkids on sewing projects. One wanted to make a snake, the other made a pillow. It was fun to do that with the kids.
Brombeere also brought the stuff for a quilt she's making for Heidelbeere. They laid out all the hexagon blocks to decide what order and arrangement to put them in. That was interesting. Once they all the blocks laid out they carefully gathered them back up so they could preserve the arrangement they came up with. That was an adventure.
All too soon it was time to head back home. Heidelbeere and family had gotten to the point that they were feeling comfortable with the new routine and the little baby was getting settled and doing better. We had been away longer than any other vacation we'd ever gone on. As we were heading back we were amazed to see there was still snow as we went over the mountains near Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was pretty.
Soon enough we were back and there was nothing left but the memories and souvenirs of all the fun time we had spent.
And we were also able to collect a few more magnets for the fridge. So, yeah, the good times were over and we were back home in our own space. After so long away, it was nice to be back.
