August 19 at Deer Tracks

Saturday:  It was a perfect weather day to be out at Deer Tracks Junction today. Not too hot, but nice and bright and sunny! We had so much fun playing with the animals today.

Look at the little lambs! You should hear them bleating! Super cute.

And the baby pigs! They have grown a LOT in the last two weeks, since Aidan and I were here.

They definitely like fresh apples!

And the EMU! They are so, so funny. I would absolutely love to know how their brains work. Trust me, if you get too close to them with food . . . you might regret losing your hand!

But the budgies remain our favorite animal out here at Deer Track. They are super sweet. It was very crowded with people out here today, so the birds were not nearly as hungry as we've seen them before.

These Pahman kiddos are very patient when it comes to animals. Erin waited and waited, nice and quiet, for a budgie to land on her stick. Finally!

I love these photos of Erin and these little birds. Look at her sweet face as she smiles at them.

Erin saw another visitor poor some seeds into their hands so the birds would land there, so Erin did the same thing. Look how happy she is that a bird is sitting in her hand. These little guys are so soft. We are always reminded of dear Matey bird and how much we loved him when we visit the budgies.

Erin climbed around at the big playground with tunnels ... it was super crowded with kids today.

Erin is a super good climber. I missed getting a picture of her alone on this "tube", but settled for a group picture with these other children.

Erin got to hold a guinea pig--it was very feisty, photo bombed my picture (see upper middle photo), and then almost squirmed out of Erin's hand. We returned it to it's little enclosure!

Here is Erin at the corn bin ... can you find her? I did not get IN the corn today (for reasons I will not mention). I had enough fun just watching from the outside.

Here is Erin pretending to be a "corn whale" ...

I suggested she lay down and take a little nap -- I'm not kidding ... it is very comfortable to lie down in a bed of corn!

We went to see the bears, but they were not to be found very close by. The closest one we could see was very happily napping in the shade.

We visited the Prairie Dogs last. They are so cute. Erin went underneath their habitat in the tunnels ...

I took a picture of her on the way IN ...

Here she is! The sun was getting quite bright and very warm ... nearing about noon.

Erin talked me into purchasing a small stuffed animal at the gift shop. She'd had her eye on this little donkey since the LAST time we were here. At $7.99 ... could I resist during another visit? No!

We ate at Culver's. Erin asked if she could test out my catsup with her finger. She cracks me up.

Here is "Chunky" the donkey. He IS super cute.

We had to swing back by my house because we also purchased a BIRD HOUSE (for $12.99!) at the gift shop and I wanted Erin to choose where to hang it in my side yard.

Isn't it cute? It's made out of some kind of metal. I'm not at all sure any bird will make a home out of it, but it sure looks great in my side yard. Erin is a very tough shopper because everything she finds she has such exclamations about -- she is very passionate about what she loves!

Our sleepover was a very nice time together. Erin is too quickly growing up! I am going to enjoy her all that I can while I have the chance!

August 28/29 Erin's sleepover

Friday:  When I arrived this afternoon to pick Erin up for her sleepover, Brendan asked if I would sit down for an "interview", part of a homework assignment for his History class. I guess he was supposed to interview someone OLD = his grandma! The questions were fun and interesting too--some answers requiring longer responses than a simple "yes" or "no". One of the questions was: "Tell me everything you know about WWII." Yikes. It was before my time, but we studied it extensively in high school and I still remember a lot of that information. Obviously, I had to summarize. One of the other questions was: "What song do you remember well from when you were 15?" I was 15 back in 1968 when the Viet Nam war was escalating. But the song I remember best was actually from 1962--however, even six years later it was still a banner song for us in '68: "Blowin' in the Wind," by Bob Dylan. 

Erin's school bus dropped the kids off while I was in the middle of this interview. Erin sat with me as I finished answering questions. I would have liked to have done a better job with my answers, but Brendan could only write so much on the paper he had with him, and I didn't want to overwhelm him either.

Erin and I left her house at about 4:30 and came directly to my house. We are going to go to Deer Tracks tomorrow morning. They close over there at 6pm on Friday nights and we would not have enough time to do everything on our list in one hour's time.

In anticipation of Erin's sleepover, I designed a little MENU for her to use with choices for her meals. Erin liked this a lot! I had fun designing the menu too! Erin chose Cheeseburgers for dinner, with chips on the side, apple juice, and an ice cream CONE (except I could have sworn she said SUNDAE--so that's what I made for her) for dessert. Erin actually LIKED the cheeseburger and requested a second one! She said it was almost as good as Culver's burgers! I didn't fry up another burger for her, though, because we hadn't eaten our dessert yet and we needed to save room for popcorn when we watched our movie.

Erin was pretty intent on making a mini stuffed animal for her good friend, Emmy (who lives down the street from Erin), and even brought stuffing along with her in her overnight bag.

We couldn't find any appropriate material in my sewing bag with which to fashion a panda bear; so, we actually cut up an old pair of underwear (don't tell Emmy!) and used it for our bear. I can't remember if I took any pictures of the finished project. I even got out my sewing machine (which fascinated Erin completely) and used it to help us stitch the material together. We used a little panda bear pattern that we found on the web.

Erin also worked on painting a little bird bath for our bird community (at the side of my house). Didn't she do such a nice job painting it? We hung it up outside Saturday morning before we left for Deer Tracks. 

We decided to watch "The Princess Bride" again because we like it so much and we laugh at the funny parts together. However, since we didn't get the movie started until nearly 8pm, we skipped the parts that Erin asked me to skip (the dungeon part where Wesley is being tortured). We ate our popcorn, and it was nearly 10pm when we got tucked in. I truly believed (!!) that Erin was tired enough to go to sleep almost immediately ... but my belief was misplaced. Erin was fully awake until a little after 11. She said she needed her "sleeping vitamin." I had none of those magical pills, so we suffered her sleeplessness out for awhile until I tucked her in for the 10th time and played quiet music for her. 

But Erin did FINALLY go to sleep. Thank you, Jesus!

August 25 Our last Tuesday

Tuesday:  Well, NOT the last Tuesday EVER--just not our all-day Tuesday until either winter or spring break, or next summer! We played over at my house for most of the day, just hanging out and doing our usual activities.

In the picture below, Greg is playing the part of a wee baby and Erin is his adoring mom.

Aidan found some free video games to do on my computer, so he played these for awhile.

Aidan also wanted to play a game of "Battleship" with me. We had a lot of fun playing this game, which surprised me because it is SO slow-moving (compared to video games); but Aidan especially loves this game. I think it's the secrecy and intrigue that attracts him.

Small Gregory enjoyed watching to see whose battle ships all sank first ...

Erin enjoyed watching our ships battle it out too.

After we finished our Battleship game, Gregory requested that we play "Blank Slate." Brendan was occupied with playing a solitaire game in the other room, so just Erin, Aidan, Greg and I played this game. Gregory is hilarious playing this game. A lot of the reason is because he isn't yet reading or writing; so instead, he draws pictures or attempts to write the word that he has in his head. He really likes this game!

Brendan made up his own solitaire game, but then I showed him a wooden one I had purchased years ago over at Robinson's.

Meanwhile, Aidan was building as he played the game--I think he won today!

Erin does really well playing "Blank Slate." She writes a word AND draws a picture!

We had our usual root bear floats too!

Grand Rapids Township Park: We had to have Brendan to his cross-country practice by 3:30. After we dropped him off at school, the little kids and I went to a playground for about an hour.

Look at Cal with this digger!

We had a good day today. I'm sad summer has to leave us already, but sometimes it's good to get back into the regular fall schedule. Erin is going to spend the night Friday, so we'll continue our sleepovers throughout the school year like we did last year.