My North Dakota grandson

On my sidebar, I state that all my kids and grandkids live in Minnesota. There is one notable exception, however. My grandson, Aaron managed to slip across the border and marry a sweet, small town gal from North Dakota named Jaime.

For their second anniversary, they took the long trip from the far side of ND to the Twin Cities for a vacation. Included in their itinerary was a nostalgic trip with grandma to Snuffy's Malt Shop. When Aaron was a kid, I used to take him and his two younger brothers there--actually, I took all my grandkids there whenever I had the chance!

Since Jaime has never been to the Twin Cities before, they're doing a lot of tourist stuff like the Mall of America, "Beauty and the Beast" production at the Orpheum Theater, a Smashing Pumpkins concert, Bubba Gump restaurant, general sight-seeing.

I told Aaron that I had a picture of him as a toddler standing next to my dad in his chair shortly before he died in 1986. Dad suffered from ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and spent his days sitting in that chair. Little Aaron had rested his hand on the arm of the chair next to Dad's. Dad reached over and patted Aaron's hand three times. The little boy responded by patting Dad's hand three times. My Dad, as we say, got a big bang out of that.

Aaron then told me how he mostly remembered Dad's pool table in the basement and the big tapestry on the wall with the dogs playing pool. He really loved to look at it.

I was delighted to tell him that after the estate sale years ago, nobody wanted the tapestry so we just rolled it up and I stored it on my closet shelf.  We pulled it down and unrolled it for him. He is really tickled to have it since it's kind of an heirloom and he has the perfect place for it. I was so happy to give it to him!

(Great art, it's not!)

I'm going to have to keep looking for the picture of the sweet little boy who made a sick grandpa smile.