January 24 Reunited and happy

Wednesday:  It doesn't seem possible ... but it's TRUE! I haven't seen Dylan, Kelly, Brendan, Aidan, Erin or Cal since New Year's Eve/Day !!! TODAY was happening NO MATTER WHAT.

I picked up little Cal from preschool at noon. I walked over to his classroom (which has an entire wall of windows) and pressed my face against it and smiled. He looked up and began yelling, "Grandma, Grandma, GRANDMA!" Squealing actually. His happy little face! So darling.

We played a bunch of stuff at my house today. How wonderful to have Cal all by himself to listen to, play with and just ... focus on him. We had a bunch of fun.

Mr. Cal is not difficult to feed--which is so nice! He eats like a trooper! He's a little bit fickle (sometimes) about exactly what he is eating when; but for the most part, he just eats whatever you put on his tray. Today, he ate Mac ' n Cheese, nachos (with taco meat and shredded cheese), a few big hunks of Colby-jack cheese, cantaloupe, crackers ... and very last--a homemade chocolate-chip cookie. What a dear little face you have, Callaghan. My heart is warmed just by looking at these photos of you!

We had fun watching my birds (and squirrels) today too. There were a few times when a squirrel was INSIDE my window box feeder--so Cal would run to the window and freak it out and it would JUMP to the ground--which really pleased Cal to no end. Eventually, Cal would just scream from a distance and get the same result--the squirrel would FLEE, and then we would laugh.

I was invited to play in the playroom for awhile. We were playing with all of our cars and trucks for a long time. Cal was really "into" my pull-back digger truck and dump truck. I took a deep breath and then told him I was going to show him something, but that he would have to play with it as I directed. I pulled out the bin of beans, chic peas and sparkly rocks from deep underneath the bottom bunk bed, and I told Cal a little story about his brother Aidan and what happened the day he and I were playing with this stuff. I told Cal I had just one rule: Keep the contents of the bin INSIDE the bin--no throwing the beans around the room! You see, Aidan (at age 4) just would not comply with that one rule; so I had to put it very far away and we couldn't have fun with it anymore. Cal listened carefully. I told him Aidan cried about it, but that I put it away anyway. SO ... look how nicely Cal is playing!

We went on a "treasure" hunt and found all of the tiny sparkly rocks that were buried underneath the beans. THEN we found all of the clear blue "ice" rocks! THEN Cal thought it would be fun to include our cheetah (the cheetah is kind of blending in, but Cal is holding it) to see how he liked being in our "rocks."

We got a full 20 minutes of fun from our time in the rock bin ... but then Cal took a handful and looked at me ... and hesitated ... and I reminded him about Aidan ... and he dropped his fistful back into the bin; but wouldn't you know it? That DARN cheetah started running through the beans and accidentally kicked a few of them -- boing --- out of the bin. I narrowed my eyes at the culprit (Cal), and then CAL offered to put the whole thing away. So we did. He kills me. I would, however, rate the bean bin a success for today!

We left the playroom and spent some time playing treehouse. Cal loves this set so much. I was telling Kaity about it the other day and she reminded me (in NO uncertain terms) that the treehouse was HERS (which it IS!). I bought it for her for her sixth (?) birthday with the condition that it had to stay at MY house (it was expensive, and would not have existed for longer than one week if Kaity had taken it home).

Cal is very imaginative in his play. I love to watch him go at it. He's very cool with sound effects too. The squirrels "squeak", the birds "tweet", and grizzly definitely ROARS, etc. Cal is a blast.

Somewhere during our few hours here (I think it was when Cal was playing with the train set in the kitchen area), I was playing children's praise songs (from my phone playlist) and Cal looked up from the trains and said to me: "Gramma--Jesus is NOT dead." I was clearing our lunch from the table and stopped, turned to him and said: "You are RIGHT, Cal. Jesus is NOT dead!" Cal responded: "He WAS dead, but then he didn't STAY dead. He rose from the dead." Yes, Cal! Jesus is most certainly ALIVE. Mmmm...my heart swelled with love and joy as I listened to how serious Cal was about this awesome truth. 

We played with our "stuffies" for awhile too. Cal likes stuffed animals a lot. Mine all have names (naturally) and special voices (!!), so it's very fun to play with them.

There was another remarkable thing that happened with Cal today. While we were playing with our trucks, Cal had the gas truck that has the word "Shell" on the side of it. I was playing with one of the car carriers and Cal asked me what kind of truck it was, so I told him. Then he told me this: "I have the SHELL truck, gramma." and pointed right to the word "Shell" on the side of the truck. How on earth did Cal read that word? What the ...?

We returned to their homestead at just about 4:00 in time to get Erin and Aidan off their school bus. Cal did NOT take any naps with me today! While we were waiting for the bus to drive up the street, Cal pretended he was driving my car. He really gets a thrill out of this.

Here is ERIN showing me her new Chinese immersion T-shirt. She knew I would like it because it is a beautiful RED.

Isn't she precious? I love spending time with Erin and listening about her school day and her friends. She has such interesting little stories to tell. And she is super sweet to listen to. I brought some after-school snacks over to their house--so Erin was eating those while she was talking to me. 

Cal kept begging to go downstairs in the basement so he could show me the latest stuff down there. 

Here he is with his LIONS hat. "Did you know that we beat the BUCS, gramma?" Yes, Cal! He knew a bunch of other football facts as well. And then he grabbed his football and went out for a long pass! He missed it, but I'm not a very good quarterback.

This little face ...

And here is Aidan Paul! He has lost THREE teeth since I last saw him! Oh.my.goodness. I love you, Aidan!

And here's Brendan enjoying a show on TV. I watched it for awhile with the kids, just to be in the same room with them. It was a poorly written and far-worse(ly) animated show that made zero sense ... sigh. It was just good to be in proximity to this beautiful child for 30 minutes.

That's all for this week! I left to return to my house shortly before 6:00. It's difficult for me to drive at night--I don't see as well, for some reason. It wasn't pitch black yet--so I left and made it safely home by about 6:20. Super thankful for this Wednesday. Not a single thing happened that the Lord did not give me strength for. He is SO good.