October 11 More ...

Friday (continued):  After the car/train, Cal slid down the tube slide a few more times . . .

. . ., and then we visited the goats. We purchased our $1 cup of "grain" for the goats ... but as soon as we entered their pen, Cal was overcome by three rather large goats who took the cup of grain right from his hand, which then dropped to the ground, where they consumed it in a heartbeat. Cal thought it was pretty funny.

Cal was very tender with the little goats ...

We washed our hands thoroughly after our goat encounter and then went inside the country store and purchased some gummy bears and an apple cider drink for Cal (in his very own pumpkin cup).

We sang in the car all the way to my house where we ate lunch at about 2:00, watched the birds, read a few stories, played basketball on my door hoop, chased each other around, and then Cal settled down to watch a 20 minute program while I picked up toys ...

We played with our Sunny puppet too for a little while.

I had a sleepy little Callaghan in the car on the way to his house this afternoon. I finally woke him up after we had been in their driveway for about 15 minutes. The kiddos came home on their bus, ate some snacks, and then everyone decided to play outside for awhile. It was such a nice weather day.

Brendan is getting good at shooting hoops ...

And, of course, so is Cal; however, his hoop is considerably shorter, and he shoots at a rather short distance ... but such facial expressions!

And enthusiasm!

I failed to take a picture of Aidan this afternoon. He played outside for awhile too, riding his bike and playing with neighbor kids. Erin hung out with me for a little while--but she was also busy playing with neighbors outside.

Here is Erin singing a little song for me--she has a very strong voice, and very good pitch too. All of these Pahman kiddos are musical. What a gift and a blessing!

October 11 (continued)

Friday (continued):  Here are pictures of the little tractor/train we rode through the orchard. It sure was a bumpy ride. Cal really liked it. Not bad for $4!

There was probably enough room for both Cal and I to fit in one car; but I felt he would be happier if he could have the car to himself--look how much fun he is having ...

Cal has a keen sense of LIFE ... I love to watch his reactions to new experiences. He was surely enthused about this little car/train.

I sat one car behind Cal ...

Cal--you are just the cutest little kid ...

Our driver made the ride very run. He zig-zagged in and out of the rows of apples ... every kind of apple under the sun!

Near the end, the driver made a circle of all 12 cars--only the first 6 were occupied.

We played awhile longer at the orchard ... see next post ...

November 11 Schwallier's Country Basket

Friday:  I picked Sir Callaghan up from Dylan today at 11:30. We headed on over to Schwallier's Country Basket to explore and play for awhile. Schwallier's is such a nice place. They open up their orchard during the autumn for hayrides, a little petting zoo, a fun playground, and a really nice bakery/gift shop. I took tons of pictures of Cal! He had so much fun.

Just outside the goat area, there is a great tube slide (two storie's high!)--Cal did great on this. I wasn't sure he would like it, but there were lots and lots of little kids sliding on it and no one got hurt.

There was a corn bin with trucks and shovels ...

Cal enjoyed the water and the rubber ducks ...

And the small playground was very nice too. Cal likes to dig in the dirt, even if he doesn't have a shovel!

Here he is swinging like Superman ...

There was a little two-storied playhouse that Cal spent a lot of time in. He also met a little friend by the name of Finn and they hung around together for a long time.

We also took a ride on the 12-car "train", but I'll show you that in the next post.

October 10 with Kaity-kins

Thursday:  I haven't seen Kaity in an entire week because my brother was here from Florida and last Saturday was his LAST day to be here--so I cancelled Kaity's Saturday afternoon (which I rarely ever do) to spend some extra time with David. Kaity went to Chris's football game at Olivet (where I would have been also had it not been for my brother's visit)--and Olivet WON big time! Yay.

I picked up a few games while at the toy store out in Grand Haven this week. I can't trust myself to go back inside that store for anything! I spent money that I really should NOT have last week; however, in my defense, I did put back a darling puppet that I really really wanted. Anyway, I tried out the new stuff on Kaity tonight.

Kaity beat me three games in a row in "Battle Box"--she was quite good at this! 

We also played with the new trampoline pong set-up and we did quite well. We just volleyed back and forth; but didn't try any tricky shots with each other. We just tried to get the feel of how wide and long the "table" was for future game purposes.

Kaity was very fun to be with tonight. She seemed happy and was quite talkative. We drove over to Altitude and brought Kenzie with us. Kaity and Kenzie have lots of friends over at Altitude, so there were lots of different "games" going on between all of them. 

Kaity is growing up so fast! She looks so much older than TWELVE in these pictures--more like 14. I am super glad Kaity doesn't mind being tall. I never liked it at all! Kaity would really like it very much if she grew to be 5'10"! She is a very good trampoline jumper! She was showing me some "new" skills tonight. She is naturally athletic, and has always loved to run; so this is a good place for her. What a nice deal to have a membership at this super convenient location. 

When I was picking Kaity up this afternoon, their neighbor was following us up the street and Scott noticed that my brake lights were essentially OUT. I am very thankful he saw this so that I could get them repaired before tomorrow (I do a lot of driving on Fridays). Thanks, Lord, that Scott was able to notify me about my brake lights tonight!

October 5 Return to Grand Haven

Saturday Afternoon:  David spent the majority of Friday doing odd jobs over at Ruthanne and Terry's. He had planned to do a whole lot of power washing--and he did accomplish their entire porch area and sidewalk in front of that--but he had also wanted to do other power washing, except the washer kept shutting off on him. David explained the reason why about this, something about a circuit being interrupted by too much water (or something like that). Anyway, we parked the power washer and hoped it would dry out by this morning so that David could finish up power washing a few areas on the other side of my house. BUT the power washer was still malfunctioning; so David put it away in my nice clean shed, and gave up the idea of any more power washing during this trip. He did manage to trim a very annoying pine tree on the rear side of my house that had limbs hanging all over my house. He got up on a ladder and snipped off every single limb! You can't believe how different it looks back there now!

It was a beautiful weather day Saturday, and after having a mini-conference about what we should do with the remainder of our day (our very LAST day), we agreed that driving out to Grand Haven and taking a nice relaxing walk would be just what was needed. We'd had a nice big breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls (yum) early in the morning; so we figured we'd lunch out near the water somewhere--perhaps at Snug Harbor!

It WAS perfectly beautiful--what a relaxing place to spend a few hours. We walked probably four miles, all along the boardwalk, out to the end of the pier and back to where we'd parked. It was sunny and in the upper 60's--so nice. There were not many boats--but the ones we saw were super nice.

Before we walked the pier, though, we stopped in at MACkite Toy Store. Yikes. I'm going to have to avoid that place in the future. They have so many nice games and toys ... and puppets. I nearly bought another darling puppet, but finally talked myself out of it. I DID, however, by something called a trampoline ping pong table. It's very nice, and I hope to get a lot of use out of it. I also got two more table games to play with the kids. Like I said, I'm going to really have to avoid this toy store! 

David and I got super hungry walking around; so after we had walked the pier, we stopped in at Snug Harbor, only to find their prices were very unreasonable for what we would actually eat; so we quietly slipped away from our table (before making any orders or promises to our waitress) and drove down to Culver's to eat. We had a delicious meal, and then David drove us back home. We played some games with Ruthanne and Terry over at their place before coming back here. 

We leave for the airport tomorrow morning at about 4:00 in the morning ... so we went to bed early and did just fine getting to and from the airport. But now ... David is gone back home and has landed right in the bull's eye of one of the most massive hurricane's Florida has been hit with in 100 years. We are all a little tense for David and all the people in the path of this storm. Praying that the storm will lessen in its power and ability to damage property and take lives. Please Lord.