Guard Drill Visitors

A.J. and Shana

Aubrie in the Baby Swing
Up close
Having fun with Mom
Abbie Grace

It was a fun weekend in the Fort for the Durham-Peerson crew. We went up with Phillip for drill this weekend and had the chance to visit with his sister, Shana and her son A.J. and of course...cool uncle Mike. It was so nice to be able to hang out together. The kids just love each other and it's so nice to watch them play and laugh and run around like crazy making memories for a lifetime. They are just the right age to really play and get to laughing together so that they fall on the floor over the silliest things. I love that Abbie has a cousin so close in age. Aubrie was their little shadow all weekend. She wanted to be right where they were at all times. The kids did a great job of watching out for her. AJ was so cute about making sure that she wasn't eating any of his toys because "she might choke on the little pieces." They were diligent at keeping harm at bay. Great helpers those two...We stayed at the Holiday Inn Convention Center which was so nice (as always). The neat thing about this particular location (aside from the fact that it's not a dump like the Ramada always was...) is that in the lobby they have a 4 or 5 story cascading waterfall. When we first stayed at this hotel, Abbie was about 2 years old. At the time we were deep into Dora country and Diego had just come on the Nickelodeon scene. For those who don't know, these are pre-school targeted TV cartoon characters. In one of the first episodes with Diego, he and Dora have to save Baby Jaguar (his animal sidekick) from falling over a waterfall. Well, here we come into this beautiful hotel lobby and Abbie just stopped dead in her tracks. I remember she looked at me with those big blue eyes and said, "Momma! Is Baby Jaguar up there? We have to save him!" All weekend we kept a close watch on the waterfall to see if we could find Baby Jaguar. We were relieved when we didn't see him. This time we went I told Abbie that story and she thought it was so funny that she thought that Baby Jaguar was actually up there. It was fun to tell her about that but bittersweet too because it reminded me that my baby isn't such a baby anymore. Time goes by so quickly... The pictures at the park are from Ben Geren Park right around the corner from the base. We were swinging when the new A-10's flew right over us. It was way cool. Abbie loves to watch her Daddy's loud airplanes fly by. She's his biggest fan. We had to go pick him up from the base and when he came out of the door in his finest camo outfit, she said, "Wow, Mom! Dad looks so cool in that outfit!" From the mouths of babes...I couldn't agree more, that boy is Handsome!