Barbara brought grandchildren Maddie, Nik, and Courtney up to spend the first warm weekend we've had this spring. She arrived about 3:30 p.m. yesterday (April 16) and immediately we all went out on the lake in the party boat because it was so warm and nice (85 F). We had tacos for dinner, specially prepared by Mary for the kids. Only the adults ate tacos -- the kids ate cereal. Barbara began her return trip at 6:30 p.m. because she had to do some chores with her chorus. The girls had a bubble bath in our Jacuzzi, followed by a movie on tape, then stories read by Mary and finally to bed.

We were all up by 7:00 the next morning to eat Mary's special Saturday bacon and egg breakfast. At about 9:30 Mary took the kids into Grass Valley to buy swim suits. Meanwhile Herb (that's me) tried out M.S. FrontPage98, which I had loaded just before Barbara arrived yesterday. I created a discussion group series of web pages, the reason for springing $95.95 to buy the software. The results looked good and most of it checked out in the web browser. About the time I hit the first snag the gang was back from Grass Valley at 11:00 a.m.

Off went the computer -- all three kids were in the lake by 11:10 with Herb as life guard. During this first swim Mary made lunch. Shortly after noon we were back on the boat on the way to Explorer Park, which was nice and warm and sheltered from the early afternoon breezes. We returned home about 3:00 and the kids jumped immediately back into the water at our beach. At 4:00 Mary and I had drinks while the kids swam some more. It's now 7:00 p.m. and I'm having a snack for dinner while I download pictures from the camera, select a few to size for the internet, and post them to the web site. The kids are banging around playing hide and seek downstairs. The pictures below were snapped during the morning swim at our beach and then the afternoon swim at Explorer park.

P.S. It's now past 9:00 p.m. About the time I was ready to transfer all the files for this web page to our ISP, Maddie and Courtney came in to ask if they could go on a moonlight boat ride. I told them to ask their grandma, and you know the answer -- grandma had told them to ask me. The moonlight cruise was very nice. The moon is just a sliver and Venus is shining bright. We made the complete lake tour, to Hidaway Park (Nik as pilot, in the dusk) and then around the lake to Explorer Park (grandpa as pilot, in pitch darkness). Thank goodness we have lights on our dock and the stairs and walkway from the dock to the house.

Tomorrow -- Hidaway Park in daylight, for more swimming and messing around on the swings and slides. It's a hard life, but someone's got to do it!