The Seven of Us

Well, as luck would have it, most of our Halloween photos ended up on Jared's phone.  (His phone takes phenomenal photos, and it's always in his pocket.  My camera takes good photos, but it's never in my pocket. We're working on "dumping" the Galaxy stuff onto my computer, but we aren't done yet. Anyway.)  I did take this photo of Corbin and his friend Milo playing together a week or so before Halloween. (Yes, it's before Halloween--our customary early snowstorm.) Milos' mom is pretty creative and she made him this donkey costume, which made Corbin talk about wanting to be a pig, which surprised me because he'd been set on being a bat for several weeks.  And he did end up being a batman bat--some type of crazy combination of a bat & batman. Those photos are on Jared's phone; here is the closest thing I have on the computer:       

Caleb turned fourteen on August 13th.   Since he went to two baseball tourneys in July and August, his presents were a little more under the radar than normal.  The only one of his gifts I remember is hitting lessons (he went to the NJC assistant coach, Joe Campo).       He had plenty of help blowing the candles out.     Isaac turned nine ten days after Caleb's birthday.  (When I was pregnant with Ike I either wanted the boys to have the same birthday--Aug. 13--or to have plenty of space between their birthdays. Well,  I got my wish:  Isaac was one (of my three) babies to be born a week late. He came on Aug. 23 instead of Aug. 17.  [That was a very long, hot summer!]) He had a good experience playing Pee Wee baseball and decided he loved baseball, thus the ballglove. I can't remmeber what other things we gave him.              

Since I'm on vacation, I'm trying to catch up on old posts.  This is a photo of Caleb receiving his Star  Scout award in the fall.  He was able to go toPeaceful Valley scout camp in Elbert in July, and he earned several merit badges and was able to advance. Caleb had mixed feelings about going to scout camp, but he ended up kind of enjoying himself.  There were a couple of problems with camp:  it was scheduled so that it overlapped with an all-star baseball tournament that Caleb had dreamed of being invited to for years, and he was the only scout from our ward  to attend, so he was all alone:  no friends, no leader--just Caleb.  Luckily, Caleb is social & confident and was unfazed by the situation.  His scout camp began on Monday, July 9 and ended on Fri. (or Sat) . It was in Elbert, CO (not for from CO springs, smack in the middle of CO) and his tournament was in Lamar, about 325 miles southwest....

This is a photo of my dad's brother, Uncle Drew (Isaac Andrew Droddy).  He is 9 years younger than my dad and has always been much broader. Otherwise they'd be twins.  One of his daughters (he has 5, along with a son) posted this photo to commemorate his 55th birthday yesterday.  Oh, my Isaac isn't named after Uncle Drew.  He's named after Drew's grandfather, or my great-grandfather, Isaac Newton Clegg, Jr. (So I guess he's also named for Isaac Newton Clegg, Sr.  What a name to give a child!  [Isaac Newton, not Isaac. Isaac itself is good. It's the apple falling from a tree image that's not so appealing to me.  Haha!  a peel ing!)

Well, for starters, this is not the blog post I've been meaning to write for 3 days.  That was going to be an unpublished journal entry.   But since my parents are here, and since today my dad told a story about my grandfather which I hadn't ever heard, and since I never knew him (my grandfather) but have always loved him with all of my guts (and my heart), and since I've done his temple work and I know he has accepted the gospel, and since the story is fresh in my mind and I can't sleep anyway, well, for all of those reasons, this post needs to be written...now. I guess I should explain the title first.  If you're a southerner, or a Louisiana (Loos eee anna) person, you don't need an explanation. For the rest of you, it is this: Several years ago I started wondering what I'd call my grandfather (William Droddy) if he were alive.  I decided I'd think of him as "Grandfather Bill".  Then I realized that "grandfather" would be ...