Weekend with Papa

We made a quick weekend trip home to Ollie to see Papa Gott and although our trips there are much, much, MUCH different than they have ever been, it was good.  It was fun to be at my parents house and Brecken always enjoys his time there.

On our drive to Ollie late Friday night, I turned around to the backseat and asked Brecken if he was excited to go see Papa..... To which he responded, "Gamma night night."  Ummmm.  A little bit later I brought up Papa again, citing that we were on our way to Papa's house and again he said "Gamma night night."  Once we arrived in Ollie and he said his hellos to papa, he said "Gamma night night" once again.... He periodically repeated it when seeing pictures of Grandma around he house.  Not only did it devastate me each and every time with the realization that she really wasn't there in the house, but made me question whether we did the right thing in letting him see Mom at the visitation and funeral.  We stand behind our decision 100%, but it did strike us as eery that he seemed to understand it on some very basic level.  

Brecken loves all of Gamma's toys and was eager to get them all out to play, even though his favorite playtime companion wasn't there.  Here he is testing out the tools....

.... and the drum set....

Playing with all of his animals.  We love listening to him tell us what all of his animals are.... "Tuttle" (turtle).... "hippo".... "gaffe" (giraffe).... "sssssssss" (snake)... "bid" (bird).... "moose"..... My favorite is when he busts out the "aaaaaaaaaaa-ter" (ant eater).....

Trying on mommy's hat....

Saying hi to the outside puppies

In addition to all of the fun toys, Brecken's highlights included showing off his non-inside voice to Papa in the restaurants.  Eric is confident that it gave Dad deja vu flashbacks of ME as a child!  Brecken was also super excited to go to a pizza buffet at the Pizza Ranch today for lunch.  An entire buffet filled with "pizzies" (pizza)- LIFE DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER!  As we neared the end of the meal, I asked Brecken if he wanted me to get him anything else, to which he replied "cookies pease."  I laughed and said that there weren't any cookies.  He looked at me again, with the big, doe-eyed sparkles that he gives us when he really wants to play the system and again chimed in with the "peeeease."  I said I would see what I could find and went to the buffet to see what I could scrounge up.... I came back with a blueberry dessert pizza and boy was he excited!  He loudly yelled "COOKIE PIZZIES" as he grabbed it and took a bite :)  The whole drive home, all we heard was a little voice from the backseat talking about "Breckees cookie pizzies....."  He was one happy boy.