THE LATEST ON THE BREIERS
APRIL 29, 2002
A VISIT WITH THE GRANDCHILDREN
Karen left Kona in early March soon after we both attended a costume party in
which we came as "Your Worst Nightmare."
The first part of her trip was to help her parents, Jeannie and Noah, move into their new home in Rancho Bernardo, not far from San Diego. Below are photos of their new home, one with Jeannie in the driveway and the other showing Karen and Jeannie in the garden. They both are good shoppers and so enjoyed outfitting this beautiful southern California home.
Karen also had a chance to meet with her long term friends Sally Robertson, whom she knew since grade school, and Jeff Grady. There they are in the photos below.
Karen, after two weeks in California, went on to Connecticut where Hilary, Damien's wife, had asked her to help out, especially with then 21 month old Lillian, our first grandchild, as Hilary was nearing her due date.
Meanwhile,
back in San Anselmo, California, daughter Nicole and husband Steve, were
expecting their first child. William Theodore Carter was born on March 20,
2002. He weighed seven and one half pounds and was eighteen and one half
inches long. Mother and child did well, as you can see in the photo on the
left taken a few hours after birth. My ex-wife Phyllis, Nicole's mother, along
with Steve's parents, Ted and Earlene, were there to help out. There is Will
about a week after he was born in the photo to the right.
Hilary
gave birth to Wesley Anderson Breier on March 25, 2002. He weighed seven
pounds twelve ounces and was nineteen and one half inches long. Mother and
child did well. There they are a few hours after birth on the left. Hilary's
parents, Jack and Carol, were also present. Karen was thrilled to hold Wesley
two hours after he was born as shown in the photo below next tothe one of the
whole Breier family. There's Wesley all swaddled in on the right. Talk about
"Nachus fun die einiclach." It doesn't get much better than
that.
.
Karen spent the next few weeks being Lillian's "grammy," and helping Hilary and Damien with the chores of running their household. She spent the nights staying at our favorite guest suite at the home of our dear friends Joel and Sandra Cohen, who live about fifteen minutes away, arriving at the Breier household each morning and leaving late in the evening.
I flew out of Kona on April second, stopping for a day to visit Nicole Steve and Will, and saying hello to Phyllis. We spent the day walking into town with Nicole carrying Will, only two weeks old, in a frontal sling. When I told Phyllis I was writing my autobiography she said "Breier, I'll sue!." I laughed and told her not to worry. It was a beautiful day and we all had a very good time, complimenting each other on our good fortune. I took the red-eye that evening to JFK. Pics of Will with his cute hat and me holding him appear below.
I joined Karen the next morning for breakfast at the Greenwich Hyatt where the limo dropped me. We picked up Max's Xterra, parked at their nearby condo. He and Lynette had finally had time to honeymoon and they had just left for two weeks in Zihuatanejo. I spent the next two weeks, sometimes helping Karen, sometimes being Grandpa Morty, sometimes carrying on with family and friends. We missed Max and Lynette who came home two days before we left for our return trip.
Here
are some pics of Wesley, Lillian, Karen, Morty, Damien and Hilary. On the left
is Wesley, the good baby that he is, sleeping peacefully. Give Wesley three
ounces to drink and he sleeps three hours. Give him two ounces and he sleeps
two hours. What a good baby!
On
the left there's a nice photo of Karen and the Breier family around the
kitchen table. Notice the signs of debauchery with two cans of whipped cream
laying about. The right hand photo shows the family's newly renovated kitchen
with everyone gathered around the central workstation island.
Karen and I spent a lovely warm spring day with Lillian, walking around the property, collecting stones and then playing in the sand box, out back of Damien and Hilary's Ridgefield house. It was early spring, the trees were mostly still the filigree of leafless branches, but, in the two weeks that I was there, the forsythias, dogwood and cherries erupted in bloom and light green buds started appearing at the tips of branches. Photos of the three of us on that warm day are shown below.
This
picture of Lillian and Karen, on the left, was taken by Sandra with her
digital camera and then sent to us by snail mail. I scanned it in. Isn't it a
beauty. Karen so loved her time with miss Lillian who is a talkative loving
child. At twenty two months she
was reciting the ABCs, counting up to thirteen, and learning from Karen her
right and left hands. All I taught her was to say "Get out of here Mister
fly." But I did have fun making faces as seen on the right. There is a
nice series of photos of Lillian below. The first shows her with
"Grammy's mittens," and the last two with the pom-poms we bought
her.
The Cohens have always welcomed us to their gracious home and we have always enjoyed staying there. We have our own guest suite, with a separate outside entrance. We had bought an antique cedar chest, which Sandra, artist that she is, made into a colorful masterpiece, and it sits in this guest suite filled with our winter clothes. To the left is a view of the side of their home from the pool area. Below is a shot of Sandra with her blooming forsythias behind her and next is a photo of a group of long time friends in the Cohen's kitchen (Pat, John, Terry, Morty, Joel, Karen, Sandra and Robert).
Max and Lynnette came back on the last Saturday of our stay and Karen and I picked them up at the airport. They had a great time in Z. It was Max's birthday and Karen put together a great birthday party that Sunday at Hilary and Dame's place, baking two great big slabs of salmon with all the accoutrements. About thirty people, mostly friends of Max, Lynette, Hilary and Damien, with Joel and Sandra, Pat Sheehan, Karen and I as the older set (we, of the sixties generation, had to go out to the garage for a smoke). Below are the party pics.
We are now back in Kona, back with Saya, Tim and the kids, back with BuhBuh and Issa, back with the coffee trees blossoming, the bananas hanging low and the ohias and limes bathed in a wet mist that rolls in, with rain, in the afternoon now. Things are looking lush. Although we missed home, we both believe that visits with our families and our grandchildren will become more and more a multi-part of our annual schedule.
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