Eddie Nance ... continued

After the episode with the chiggers at Lake Texoma in the summer of 1996 Ed and Nenette weren't at all anxious to go back. We did finally convince them to join us picnicking on a beautiful Sunday in the spring of 1997. As for Eddie, he was raring to go and couldn't wait for trivial things like pants. Here he is running out to jump in Black Beauty.

We took everybody up to Lake Ray Roberts with us one Sunday, and made a day of it, visiting both the Isle du Bois and the Johnson Branch units. These parks are on a relatively new lake East of Denton, just a few miles down the road from Pilot Point. The parks themselves are practically new, and the facilities are great. Each has 2-3 miles of concrete paths suitable for walking, bicycling, or rollerblading. Both have nice beaches, although I think the Johnson Branch unit has the better.

Along the way there are some great horse ranches, and just up the road in Tioga (home town of Gene Autry) there's a pretty fair BBQ place known as "Clark's Outpost". I took along the laptop computer and the GPS receiver and Ed got to track our route on a moving map.

Eddie was really "Joe Cool" with those sunglasses. We couldn't get him to calm down long enough to take a picture. Finally Angie grabbed him and I snapped this one.

Eddie even convinced his dad to come try out the slide with him. They both made it down safely. On the way home we stopped out in the boondocks where it was nice and dark, and got a great view of the Hale-Bopp comet.

I think they must have liked the place, because they went back and took some visiting friends a few weeks later. Here's a picture Ed took then of Eddie showing off his muscles. The boy is really growing!

While we were on the Caribbean cruise, we picked up a swimming frog at the Minnie Mouse House in Charlotte Amalie. Amazingly it doesn't even have batteries - you pull a string to wind it up! He had so much fun in the bath with it that he wouldn't put it down afterwards. (If it lasts two more baths, I'll be surprised.)

Since the Frog came from St. Thomas, we all nicknamed it "Thomas Frog".

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