Family Fun

This Memorial Day week has been a family gathering of sorts...for a couple of reasons.  First, the graduation of the first grandson, son, nephew - Ryan Stewart - from high school.  Mom's surgery specifically scheduled so that she would be able to attend...a most important consideration. :)  This is the same Ryan that only 4 years ago had his C4 & C5 vertebrae broken in a home plate diving tag (Ryan was the catcher...but he got him out!)  He's now a strapping young man and at 6'3" has won the Stewart height record from his Aunt Heather.  Guess which one he is in this photo? ;)

The other, and obvious reason, is we're focusing on family time this week.  Heather drove down from San Francisco on Saturday and there have been a number of adventures all week, which you can see pictures as we get them ready added to the slide show in the right side blog menu.  We encourage you to click on it to take a look.

It started Sunday with Nan being welcomed in as a new member to her church, Spirit of Joy and then we went and enjoyed a fun breakfast with Lana and Mary.  That afternoon, Nan and Heather went shopping to gather the fixin's for the frittatas to be prepared for brunch the next morning.

Monday was a lovely family brunch and photo session day, one you'll see reflected a lot in the slideshow!  Tuesday was the adventure up the mountain to Idyllwild and our beloved Skyland Ranch.  Skyland is a Girl Scout camp that mom took many trips up with her GS troops with Margaret in the troop and me as a leader helper.  Then, I was later both a camp counselor the summer of 1981 and, a couple years later, asked to join the Greater Long Beach Girl Scout Council as staff to develop new troop and other programs that would keep the property in use since it could no longer afford to operate a resident camp.  It was there, thanks to a volunteer, that I learned about the major called Recreation and spent 4 years at Skyland loving her and developing programs that lasted for many years.  So mom and I shared our fond memories of this wonderful place.

On Wednesday, the family and our friend Jenny went sailing on San Diego Harbor!  One of Nan's "bucket list" activities was that she wanted to sail with me again.  Well, I made that happen and we had a terrific day!  The women headed out before lunch and the boys joined in a little later in the afternoon.  The wind cooperated well sometimes, and sometimes we used just a little extra help from the iron wind generator (that would be the motor ;)  Since all she did was sit around and enjoy the day, toward the end, we even got Nan onto the helm of the sailboat to make her do some of the driving! ;)  Margaret was the "official" photographer and her pictures will be added soon, but she and Jenny and I were all taking various photos on our phones and posting to Facebook as we sailed...ah technology!

Today is graduation day and I'm sure will be another proud moment for all of us...and sure to be more pictures coming from that too!

Nan is hanging in there...some days or parts of days better than others.  She's got some pain and tires pretty easily sometimes, but she does her best to rest and work through it...she's an avid solitaire player on her iPad to help focus through the pain...another yeah for technology! ;)  She's reading your comments both on Facebook and on this blog and is appreciating every one of them...thank you!