"What Are You Doing - Screaming Pants?"

On Monday (7/23/12), Anne's and my son Kevin came to our home with his boys Brody 6 and Gannon 4. As their loving grandfather, the boys and I had a wonderful time playing together in our backyard.

They played on the swing set, swinging as high as they could, while also sliding down the slides and playing in the clubhouse. Together, we played catch and played soccer with small soccer style balls. At one point as Brody was running to a far side of the yard and laughing aloud as he called to us, Gannon, who loves to give nicknames, laughingly shouted, "What are you doing - screaming pants?" as Kevin, Brody and I laughed in response, with Gannon laughing all the more when he saw our reaction to what he said.

Earlier, with a beaming smile Brody proudly announced that on August 3rd he would be turning 7 and would be having a party on August 4th. Watching this, Gannon looked up at me and smiled and replied that he is now "4 and a half." He said he too would be having a birthday party, but he added, he didn't know when that party would be nor did he know the date of his birthday.

I laughed and acknowledged both boys, telling them I would be looking forward to attending their parties, which pleased each of them. I can already anticipate their other grandfather, Ben Haney leading all of the kids in various games as everyone has a great time together.

As grandparents, it is our job to spoil these little children and Anne and I fed the boys chocolate covered tiny pieces of vanilla ice cream, called Dibs, giving them all the Dibs they wanted and to wash it all down, lemonade for Brody and chocolate milk for Gannon.

When it came time to leave, the boys were happily bouncing all over the place and in their joy we knew we had done our grand-parenting well.

Dick