Nana & Boogie

Looking back on my child hood some of my favorite times were spent at the babysitters. Jeannie and Donald Sherrard or known to us as Nana and Boggie. They kept me and Jilly and Mason. I remember loving Nana's cream of wheat and to this day not being able to get it to taste just like Nana's, her Nestea which has never tasted good since then, hot dogs with mustard and carrots and ranch (still love em to this day but substitute the mustard for ketchup), setting her afghan on fire when trying to run my finger through a candle flame like my big brother did. Not sure how he did it when I was younger so I slowly ran my hand through the flame and boy did it burn causing me to knock the candle over which landed on the afghan sitting in the couch. Boy how that could have had a disastrous outcome, burning my face with her iron, playing with "chico" the Pomeranian, the black stool that we all sat on, the bozo show and of course the soap Santa Barbara. Those days were so much fun. My mom enrolled me in preschool where my best friend Rachel was going thinking I would love spending time with her. But after only a few days I made it quite clear that I wanted to be at Nana's house.

We all try to make time to visit with Nana and Boogie and normally it coincides with the Christmas Holidays but as we have all grown older and started families of our own it seems harder and harder to make these visits occur. Well we all were able to visit last year which was a first in along time. This year Mason wasn't able to get there but Mom, Jilly, Hayden, Landon and myself managed to take a trip back to our babysitters. Hayden loved seeing the dogs (not Chico) but still a Pomeranian and he also got some up close and personal musical lessons from tapping at the piano to picking on a steel guitar. Nana was getting her hair done while we were all downstairs listening to some music and watching a man show off his talent where you could see despite his Alzheimer's he still had his skill for that old steel guitar and you could see the pride in his eyes as he showed us some of his prized guitars. We had a great time visiting and hope to do it again next year. Maybe next time I'll have to have a big glass of nestea despite my not liking sweet tea anymore. Hoping my kids get the chance to have somebody make such powerful memories with them that they can pull up one day and smile just thinking about them. That's what Nana and Boogie did for me.