June 29 Kaitlynn is FOURTEEN

Monday:  Kaity was born fourteen years ago today in El Paso, Texas. I was actually there when she was born! Not in the birthing room--NO! But I did meet her on her first day. Jesse brought all of us to the hospital in the early afternoon to meet this little squeaker.

Look how little Kaity was!

Emma, Chris, and Matt (and Jesse) were thrilled with her! Look at Emma gazing at this tiny sister.

Emma was still technically NINE when Kaity was born, but she turned TEN just about 7-8 weeks later.

Emma was immediately mothering her little sister from the first day of her life. I love these pictures so much.

I had to leave El Paso the next day and fly back to Grand Rapids. Kaity was my SIXTH grandchild born, and just my SECOND granddaughter.

When the family moved back to Michigan in 2013, Kaity was just a year. I had the honor of having these four grandchildren once again be close enough to spend time with almost every week. Once Kaity was about two years old, she and I began having one-on-one time, once per week, during the school year when the older kiddos were gone from 8-4:00 Monday through Friday.

But this year ... I didn't get to spend time with Kaity very much, and rarely one-on-one. She stopped coming over to my house every Thursday afternoon after school, and oftentimes on Saturday afternoons too for many years. I have missed spending time with her. But I came to realize that I cannot force anyone to come over to my house! I do stop by Jesse's place almost every Thursday and Sunday afternoons to deliver at Kit-Kat bar to Kaity and have a little "chat" time with both Kaity and her dad. 

BUT ... you can't just burst in upon people and start flashing your camera (or phone) in their faces to take pictures, can you?!!! Consequently, I really had to search hard for pictures of Kaitlynn this year. I did find a few that I used to design her card though.

 

So ... dear Kaity ... I pray God's BEST for you, sweet granddaughter. Trust me, no person on this earth will love you like JESUS does. I'm asking that you will give Him your heart every day, and learn to love and follow Him as He alone deserves.

June 27 more Deer Tracks

(continued): We entered the budgie pavilion and found about 50 other folk in there feeding the birds as well. It was a tiny bit crowded! Erin was thrilled to be there! We had so much fun feeding these beautiful birds.

Erin is scolding this one little bird because it was knocking other birds out of the way to get to Erin's food stick.

Look at this beautiful yellow one!

Erin kept trying to sneak in a soft touch on a wing or tail or back ... but these little birds are wise guys--it's like they have eyes on their backs and can see your hand coming, no matter how slowly and quietly you are making your move.

I noticed another group of people who had taken some stray seeds from the feed stick and placed them in the palm of their hand--and birds were flying right inside their hands to eat! Erin and I decided to try it! She was so excited to have a bird sitting on the palm of her hand.

Erin is very comfortable around animals. She is not one bit afraid and seems to soak in their beauty and wonder deep inside of her heart.

We stayed with the budgies for a very long time; but it soon grew apparent that they had enough to eat for awhile and were no longer coming on our sticks or to our hands. We walked a few feet over to the big play area--the one that has dozens of tunnels. Erin wore our head lamp and got along just fine.

I put a water bottle inside my purse for Erin--it was only in the mid-70's, but the sun was out full force, and it felt warmer than that.

Here is Erin at the 90-Acre Wood. We are at the guinea pig enclosure. Erin is holding "Junior" on her lap inside of a little fabric sack.

Practically next door to the guinea pigs is this CORN silo (kind of) where you can play for a very long time if you choose.

Erin was very glad to be here! She played, and I rested. !!

We buried Erin in the corn!

Erin isn't one bit afraid of heights, so she hung out near these steps so that she could practice her jumps.

It was getting later in the day. When I saw the horse enclosure, I remembered the cup of apples we had purchased. These little horses were quite hungry!

I think these sheep are named "Romeo" and "Juliet" but I'm not 100% certain about that.

Their bodies are SUPER soft, and they are very sweet animals.

I think Erin was rather entertained by them.

Here is Erin in the upstairs of the playhouse, a used-to-be favorite place of Kaity's whenever we visited.

Erin at the duck run ... except my pictures didn't show any of the ducks ...

Erin pretending she is a GIGANTIC SPIDER!!!

Ten years ago (!!) I crawled around in these underground tunnels too ... I DID! There is no way on earth I could do that now. The children LOVE to crawl around underground. Erin is wearing the headlamp, which helps her see better underground.

Here is the rotating tube, which is a lot heavier than I thought! Erin was having a hard time getting it to spin, so she asked me to assist her--I wasn't very much help.

We finally got it to turn a little bit ...

And here Erin is, pretending to run like a hamster!

It was about 1PM when we left Deer Tracks and headed over to the Rockford Culver's to enjoy our lunch.

I asked Erin for her very best smile, and she delivered! I love you, Erin. It was super nice to have you overnight this weekend.

June 27 at Deer Tracks with Erin

Saturday:  We had planned to arrive at Deer Tracks Junction at exactly 10:00 AM this morning, but two things happen that delayed us until 10:30. First of all, Erin and I were sitting at my desk and looking at some pictures when I noticed that I should really try to brush through Erin's hair and maybe put it in a "pony" before we left for the day. I knew she would be more comfortable with it off her neck. I didn't calculate well just how long it would take to de-tangle Erin's beautiful, thick hair! 

Erin sat very quietly and patiently while we watched a genius musician lead the San Francisco orchestra (improvisation) in a tune they didn't know they were going to play until he gave it to them, each instrument section at a time, imitating ALL of the instruments with perfect pitch--I love to watch this guy as he performs. Anyway, I sectioned off Erin's hair ... about 20 minutes later, she was all combed out and her hair was in a nice pony-tail. BUT it was already 10 AM!

The other impediment to us arriving at 10 AM was continued DETOURS with erroneous signs! I admit to being highly directionally challenged, but signage should NOT indicate a detour unless it truly takes you where you need to be. We finally arrived at 10:30, so it was not a tragedy or anything.

We visited the prairie dogs first. Erin got a kick out of tunneling over to their habitat. She stayed in her bubble for the longest time and watched them scurrying around. They were very interested in checking her out.

The little house the prairie dogs were climbing the last time I was here was ... gone! I watched them last time eating the wood. Perhaps they ate the whole thing!

We walked over to the kangaroo enclosure ... but all of the adult kangas were napping. I was telling Erin about the "baby" roo, but I couldn't find him to show her ... when suddenly ...

this little guy hopped from the outer enclosure to where the adult kangaroo were napping. Isn't he a cutie? His "reddish" fur indicates that he is a male.

Next, we went into the barn that was selling the carrot cups, the budgie sticks, as well as apples. We picked up what we needed, and walked on over to see the pigs. We had to walk right by the Emus in order to get to the pigs, and this is how we were greeted. A LOT of excitement. We had carrots! These are juvenile emu. They could snatch a carrot out of your fingers as fast as lightning!

There is not an abundance of pigs this year at Deer Tracks. We did locate about four little pigs that Erin enjoyed feeding. She is so pleased to be here.

Erin demonstrated her tractor driving skills before we walked over to the budgies.

Budgie posting is next ...

June 26 and 27 Erin's sleepover

Friday:  I picked Erin up at 3:30 for her long-awaited sleepover. She packed up a few of her belongings and was ready to go quite quickly. We really didn't do anything very spectacular Friday night; we just kind of hung out together. Erin is not difficult to entertain because she is quite easy to please.

Having played a game of "Life" a few weeks ago with all FOUR children at once, which was quite chaotic actually, I promised Erin that just the two of us could play the game when she came over. She was hoping to pack her car with babies and pets, perhaps even necessitating an extra car to fit everyone!

In the picture below, Erin has drawn an "Action" card which has told her she must do some percussion "music" with her hands and ask another player (just me) to compete with her as to which of us is the best percussionist. When there is only TWO people playing, the competition is rather limited! I told her she was the best, so she got to spin the wheel and win some extra money.

Here is Erin deciding which house to buy: an economic "flat" or a "luxury villa". Since the "flat" required 100K and didn't really look very inviting, Erin opted to purchase the "luxury villa" for 200K since it looked far more inviting.

I admit that I really don't like a game that's sole purpose is MONEY and gaining MORE of it. But at least this version of "LIFE" has cards for the kids to read and decisions to make, and a few "drama" cards that keep the game interesting. I ended up winning by a mere $30K (we both had around three million dollars at the end).

After we ate our dinner, we tried (rather feebly) to learn how to play "Sleeping Queens 2 (the rescue)" but ended up just looking at the new cards and laughing at all of the funny kings and queens. That was okay--I'm going to have to watch the game be played online somewhere in order to help me figure it out. I find the written rules a bit obscure.

It was nearly 7:30 before we settled down to watch a movie. It's not easy these days to find a movie that is agreeable to both myself AND the grandchild. These kiddos are used to high adventure movies, and the CD's I have here have been watched until we can barely stand to view them any more. I do have many nice CD's with great storylines, but I can't entice any of these four kiddos to watch them with me!

We finally settled on "Mufasa" because I had wanted to see it when it was in the theaters, but never did. Erin had already seen the movie, but she was fine with seeing it again. Having now watched it, I'm not sure I liked it! Perhaps it was just too mystical for me ... I'm not sure. It was LONG; so we paused it and had a nice ice cream cone to give us a break. 

After the movie was over, we hung around for a little while, read a few short books, and then got tucked in at nearly 10pm. 

Saturday Morning:  We are going to Deer Tracks today! 0% chance of rain, and temperatures in the mid-70's. Can't ask for much better than that. We had a little bit of time to use up before we left for the park, so we put together a puzzle ...

... with Erin very happily putting in the VERY LAST PIECE.

This is Erin's "I put in the last piece of the puzzle" smile!