Birthdays--I

We went north for our youngest Chicago granddaughter's birthday. She's just a couple of weeks older than our Texas granddaughter, who was also able to attend. I was a bit under the weather, but the kids were really fun. Susan took some great pictures while we were there. Here are some samples. 

First, the two birthday girls. Texas on the left and Chicago on the right.

Our puppy really likes the two little ones. Here's a picture of Ginger and our granddaughter checking out the backyard.

Here are a couple of close-ups of Rob's daughter. The purple dress (looks blue in the photo) was a present from my mom when our granddaughter was born. She grew into it just in time for her birthday.

Finally, a girl and her cake.

Birthdays--II

These next posts are going to come out of order. I have two granddaughters that are turning one this year--within weeks of each other. We went to Chicago for the first one a couple of weeks ago, but I was so out of it with a back spasm that I didn't take any pictures. Susan took a couple of rolls, and while she takes great pictures, she doesn't believe in digital photography, so I'll have to wait for those to be developed before I can scan them and put them in my blog. For the birthday this week, I was feeling much better and took lots of shots. I decided to put the celebrations up out of sequence rather than wait any longer.

Here's our granddaughter telling grandma how old she is.

Opening presents and playing with the very fun (and noisy!) toy grandma and grandpa got her.

She had her own cake (thankfully we didn't have to share--you'll see why in the pictures) and really enjoyed it.

Birthday parties are really fun!

Mom's House

While we were gone the builder made significant progress on my mom's new house here in Sun City. We were really impressed. We are on target to have her moved to Texas by June 1, although her household goods may not come until the next week. Here are some photos.

The front and down the side. We were afraid that the yard wouldn't be very level and that there would be steps in front, but they did a great job of grading the yard.

A couple of views of the kitchen.

The great room looking out from the kitchen. Here you can see some of the patio and how far she is from the neighbors behind.

It's Been a While

It's been a while since the last post. We've been gone to the almost unfrozen north for the past two weeks. Believe it or not, we made it to Chicago for the first snow of the winter and the last (just a flurry, thankfully). We went to our granddaughter's soccer game and it was kind of cold and drizzly--about 40 degrees I imagine--and I remarked to Susan that "this is as cold as I ever want to be again." The lady sitting next to us thought that was hilarious. I teased our daughter about her blood getting thin after she moved to Texas, but it sure is easy to get used to the weather down here.

We had a great trip. The main reason was to attend our youngest Chicago granddaughter's first birthday party. She is a real cutie (as are all my grandkids). Our son and daughter-in-law regularly have pictures taken of the kids at appropriate times--birthdays, etc. While the kids are always cute, the settings are rather contrived--child with stuffed toy, child with football, ... Our daughter-in-law decided to try something different--take the pictures herself. I hope she continues, because our granddaughter's picture is fabulous. See for yourself

There will be more pictures as I sort through what we all took the last two weeks, but I thought this one was special.

This weekend is our Texas granddaughter's first birthday. She actually traveled to Chicago (with her mom and aunt) for her cousin's celebration, but unfortunately the logistics of coming from Chicago to Texas (three siblings, dad with a new job, mom pregnant) will keep our Chicago granddaughter from returning the favor.

Stay tuned for more on our trip.

Some more Pictures of Texas Spring

Bluebonnets near the Sun City entrance:

Our backyard:

Texas Wildflowers--From our Street

Just down the street.

Coloring Eggs

We invited family and friends for a dinner party on Saturday last. We had a great time and no one complained about the food, so I guess it was a success. Before dinner, Chris and our granddaughter came out to color eggs. It was our granddaughter's first time. Here are a couple of photos:

And a short movie. This might have been our granddaughter's first encounter with stickers.

Mom's New House

Pretty soon now, my mom is moving to Texas to join the rest of us as transplants. We are so excited. She will be moving into a brand new house that is being built just for her. If all goes well, she'll be here about the first of June. Here are some pictures of the construction site that we took today.

Another Visit from our Granddaughter

We get to see our Texas granddaughter often, which pleases us immensely. When she came (with mom and dad) this week, her mom was doing a little work on the computer and our granddaughter wanted to help. She will soon have her own computer--mom and dad made a donation to the outfit that's providing low cost computers to kids in developing countries, which gave them the opportunity to buy one for her. 

Here's a picture of our granddaughter on her mom's lap getting ready to help:

Here's a movie of our granddaughter interacting with a kid-friendly program on the Net:

The Texas Primary and Caucus

By now most everyone has heard about the complicated way the Democratic Party in Texas selects its delegates to the national convention. They've been doing it this way for a long time, but it came to everyone's attention this year because the Texas primary/caucus actually meant something. In the past, the candidate was usually chosen by now, so the process never got much coverage. 

As newly minted Texans, we thought it was our patriotic duty to participate. There were a lot of explanations of the process circulating in the weeks before election day. Both candidates sent out information to their supporters and the newspapers tried to inform the public. In retrospect, no one did a very good job of describing the whole process. Ben Sargent, the editorial cartoonist for the Austin Statesman described it thusly:

Despite the confusion and given that we are retired and have lots of time, we went anyway, just to see what all the excitement was about. It turned out to be great fun for a cynic like me. The process is complicated by several factors. First, voting in Texas no longer takes place on "election day." We voted a couple of weeks early when there were no crowds. Second, no one anticipated the number of people who would show up for the caucus (which begins 15 minutes after the polls close). Third, no one expected that so many people would actually vote in the primary (some jurisdictions where they didn't use electronic balloting came very close to running out of ballots). Lastly, most of the volunteers at the polls had no idea whatsoever about how the process would proceed after the polls closed.

Here are a couple pictures I took of part of the crowd at our polling place. 

When voting ended, there were about 750 people milling around waiting for the caucus to begin. It was supposed to start at 7:15, but ours didn't begin until 8. I understand that some of them didn't begin until after 9 (in Texas, if you are in line when the polls "close" you get to vote, no matter how long it takes).

Once things settled down, it turned out the caucus process is actually pretty simple, but like the overall primary process, it comes in two parts. First, everyone in a given precinct stands in line and once it is confirmed that they voted in the primary they give their name, address, telephone number and candidate preference (no secret ballot here!), which is hand written on a prepared form. Once this is done, you can leave if you want. The totals for each candidate are summed and a predetermined formula calculates the number of delegates allotted to each candidate by precinct. 

The popular vote allocates 128 delegates and the caucuses allocate 67. The number of delegates a candidate gets in the caucuses depends on how willing that candidate's supporters are to hang around for the caucus. You may recall that Clinton was announced as having won the Texas primary. Actually, it looks like she lost. From the popular vote, she got 2 more delegates than Obama. But it appears that in the caucuses Obama got 7 more votes than Clinton, giving him a net win of 5 delegates in Texas--all because his supporters were  more committed (?) or informed (?) than Clinton's. But...

The caucus is not over after you indicate your preference. The distribution of delegates (by precinct) is announced to the voters who have remained and they caucus in separate groups according to whom they support to elect the actual delegates to the next level. This group of remainders also votes on a set of resolutions proposed by the Texas Democratic Party. In my precinct there were 178 voters who expressed a candidate preference (110 for Obama and 68 for Clinton). Obama got 2 of our three delegates and Clinton got the other. Of the 178 people who voted, fewer than 25 stayed for the actual caucus--about 15-16 for Obama and 7-8 for Clinton. Those groups chose the actual delegates.

Because of all the publicity it garnered this year, I expect that the process will be changed before 2012.