Grandchildren and Friendships

The genius and I have been blessed to have eight grandchildren. Four of them live in Phoenix, AZ, so we only see them once or twice a year; we usually take a trip out there, and some or all of them come here every summer.

Many times we all traipsed to Florida to join my sister and her extended family for a week. Altogether, there were about 35 of us who descended on the Towers Condos of Perdido Key.

Several years ago Tom, the oldest grandson, now 22, began bringing his best friend Mike with him. We all love Mike and the really good news for us was that he eventually fell for Tom’s sister (Jordan, now 20), and it seems that plans for marriage are in the talking stage.

Bailey 17, not to be outdone, brought her friend, also. They had been inseparable since kindergarten. This pretty little girl with the bubbly personality quickly fit right in with all of us, and we enjoyed taking her to Florida for 2 years in a row. However, there were two minor problems: 1) her name was Jordan also, and 2) when she rode down to Florida, she liked to listen to her CD’s and sing along with them with an amazingly LOUD voice, bothering the driver. The first was solved by referring to Jordan 1 and Jordan 2; the second, by putting her in the very back of the rental van.

The rest of the story: This bubbly, now gorgeous young lady has a name that is more recognizable than Chief Justice John Roberts (so I read recently in Glamour Magazine in her four page spread). She is Jordin Sparks (yes, I purposely misspelled her name above), the 2007 American Idol winner.

Bailey and Jordin have remained good friends (Bailey even appeared on AI for about a 10 second blurb and was introduced to America as “my very best friend in all the world”).

Until February, when Idol started, we saw Jordin every time we visited Phoenix, but no more, of course, she’s never there.