Last real day of vacation

On the last full day of vacation my sister wanted to eat lunch alone with Gretchen (my god-daughter). They have know each other since they were babies and our families lived next to each other. Pritam did lots of begging and even suggested she go to the same restaurant but sit at a different table (this sounded so much like a Casey argument that it was scary). She finally agreed to have lunch with Grandpa and me at the Good Stuff on the beach. This was fun and included exciting things like pigeons and other birds joined us in the restaurant and we got to see fun things like a skateboarder with two dogs acting like sled dogs giving him quite a ride. After lunch we dipped our toes in the water. You can see from the picture that it was quite foggy at the beach even though it was a beautiful warm autumn day else where. Later we visited with Gretchen, Henry and Fritz (who is the same age as Pritam) and later Tony when he got home from work. After using plastic bags as parachutes for their stuffed animals, the kids got the great idea to use the bags as parachutes for themselves. Grandpa kindly explained why this would not work given their relative sizes, but the kids wanted to try anyway. They did understand that helmets would be a good idea and finally settled on jumping off a storage bin that was not too high. Later Shea and Pritam worked some more on improving their guitar playing skills. My dad has an rather old Gibson guitar that was his a child. It has be laying around the living room for various grandchildren to play with. Eric (Nikko and Satya's dad who is in the music business) pointed out that it might be worth more than grandpa realized. Eric was nice enough to tune the guitar for Shea. A bit of detective work indicated it could be worth between $3000 and $5000, but as you can see, this did not stop grandpa from allowing the grandchildren to enjoy playing with it.

Running from the cold waves.

Fritz coming down to visit with the adults.

Henry contemplating where to test out his parachute.

Pritam and Chippy checking each other out.

Pritam ready to go with her borrowed helmet and "parachute".

Pritam calm while the boys are wrestling. Mostly she was right with them on the active behavior, but for something about the window seat brought out the girly behavior.

Fingering the notes while Shea did the strumming.

Learning how to use the pick. You can tell how absorbed they are as they are not avoiding the camera.