June 2 More time with the kiddos

Tuesday:  The kiddos had a half day of school today (and just two more half days of school left for the entire school year!), so I picked them all up at noon-ish and brought them to my house to eat lunch and hang out for the afternoon.

These four beautiful grandchildren! The picture below is a picture I snapped on my phone of a picture that is soon to hang in their house--taken by a very dear photographer friend of the family. Look at them!

Brendan turned 14 in February. Aidan is 9 as of mid-March. Erin will be 8 in the next little while. Gregory had his sixth birthday in May! They are quite a group: active, happy, creative, funny, loud (!!), and a little bit goofy sometimes. I love them dearly. They have such interesting personalities.

I decided to try playing the game of LIFE with all four of them in the afternoon.

Note to self: NEVER play LIFE with four children this age all together! It's too much! We cracked up a lot while playing it, but I was super exhausted by the time the game had ended. Little Gregory and I were partners (since he is not yet a reader).

Isn't this a great picture of Erin? I could eat her up sometimes, she is so precious.

One problem with the game is that it takes too long to take a turn, because a bunch of stuff happens during each person's turn. So Gregory got extra fidgety, and Aidan lost patience with the whole thing after we'd been playing for a solid HOUR. I don't blame him! He did end up winning the game. I think he will enjoy it much better with only two players. I've never truly liked the whole premise of the game ... money, money, money ... you know, that whole mindset. I will say, however, that this updated version of the game does facilitate a lot of fun interaction with the players that has nothing whatsoever to do with money. Erin was thrilled with the fact that each married couple could have "babies". She announced that she wanted A LOT OF BABIES! She ended up with triplet girls and was so pleased. I think Brendan ended up with FOUR pets (he was so happy about this) and three children.

We also enjoyed some waffle ice cream cones with mint-chocolate chip ice cream. YUM.

Near the end of our afternoon we drove over to Dwight Lydell Park to play for awhile. We brought a bunch of paper airplanes with us to fly around--but the wind wreaked havoc with them!

However, we did meet a very nice "grandma" whose name was Mary. She was at the park with her grandson, Sawyer. They flew airplanes with us for awhile too and Sawyer took his favorite one home with him. It was nice meeting these kind folk at the park.

I delivered the kiddos back to their house at 6:00 sharp. Ella was walking down the street as we drove up. She was all set to take over the care of these guys until Kelly returned home from her evening responsibilities. 

It was a good day! I was super tired, but the good kind of tired--you know, when you've done all you can do and most of it turned out just fine! Thankful. So thankful.

May 30 HARPER

Saturday Evening: I can't remember how many years now that I have been invited to Harper's birthday party; but I am sure it is many! You see, Harper lives right next door to Jesse, and Harper and Kaity have been friends since they were little kids--Kenzie too!

Scott has been an almost best-friend of Jesse's since they were in 7th grade! How cool that they get to live next door to each other, which is due in large part to the generosity of Scott (but it's too complicated to explain here in this blog). However, Jesse has been very helpful to Scott in many ways too--so it's a two-way thing actually. Scott has a lot of the same interests and abilities Jesse has: they like to tear cars apart, rebuild engines, run sound equipment, fix stuff, etc.

I hardly took any pictures! Firstly, their DOG (the name of which escapes me) is a BIG pet they had tied on a leash nearby where Jesse and Scott are standing in the above picture. However, I didn't SEE the dog and when I approached and started walking away, it jumped and RAN toward me and then leaped, with it's paws extended (which looked really nice on my once very clean WHITE jogging pants), all over me! I don't do dogs, and even less BIG barking jumping HUGE dogs. Naturally, since I was taken by surprise, I screamed (embarrassing). Sigh. I did recover, but I stayed my distance from the beast.

Here is Harper! She is eleven now. She's a great kid and a lot of fun to be around. I try to make a birthday card every year for her. This year, however, I had to go to Facebook and steal some photos from her mom's account in order to have enough to make a decent card. I just haven't seen Harper much this year--mostly due to Kaity not coming over to my place anymore ... 

Harper's folks go all out on making sure their girls birthday celebrations are first rate. All of their family show up and many friends too.

Happy #11 to Harper!

May 28 Eighth Grade promotion

Thursday Evening:  By the time we arrived at the Fine Arts Center at about 6:50, I was ... rather exhausted! I hardly took any pictures at all -- mainly because we were too far away for my phone to really focus and do any justice to the person being photographed; but also, I just wasn't able to concentrate very well on the ceremony.

It was very nice, though, that several students were asked to give their "memories" of their two middle school years. It would have been a bit more informative if I could actually have HEARD what the students were saying. I don't think they were miked properly -- or perhaps the student themselves were not using the microphone correctly. In any case, between the speed of their talking and the bad miking, it was difficult to get the gist of the experiences they were describing.

Eventually, each student name was read by their current home room teacher and the students walked the platform to shake hands with their principal. I was fascinated by all of the unusual names of the students! I totally neglected to snap a picture of Brendan getting his certificate and walking the platform--that's how tired I was I guess. Kelly said she would send me one of her pictures of that, so that's good. 

Next year, it's high school for our "Little Fellow" who is on his way to becoming a very nice young man. Love you, Brendan.
 

May 28 Carnival Time!

Thursday:  After school this afternoon, Meadow Brook Elementary School had their outdoor carnival for the students. Also going on this same day, but later this evening, is Brendan's eighth grade "graduation" in anticipation of his high school freshman year. 

I was asked to take the three elementary kiddos to the carnival. Two neighbor friends hitched a ride with us as well! We made it right on time to the carnival at 5:30 and were able to play there until about 6:30 because then we had to load everyone back into my car and head on over to the Fine Arts Center for Brendan's event.

Here are a few pictures I took ...

Tug-of-War was a pretty popular site at the Carnival. I can't even count how many times Aidan and Gregory participated. Watching them was a lot of fun. This was a serious WAR!

Can you find Aidan?

Do you see Gregory?

There were bouncy houses, basketball hoops and soccer ball nets, face painting, FREE popcorn ...

I walked around for quite awhile with the kids, but they split in various directions so I finally went over to the dugout and took a load off my feet. Dear Erin joined me off and on. She was hugely enjoying herself between eating popcorn, playing games with her friends, and just running everywhere. We had some nice long chats.

Here she is with a fist FULL of popcorn. She said she was imitating a chipmunk. Very authentic, Erin!

I was too busy to really focus on taking many pictures. I stood in a very, very, VERY long line to get the mini-donuts the kids were wanting. It was a super annoying line! Mostly because there were middle school "helpers" who were SO LOUD--you know, 13-14 year old girls yucking it up in line right behind me. I survived with only two sour faces that I gave them during the entire 25 minutes in line!

We brought their little neighbor, Lia, with us. She would not come without her older sister, Sai. So we actually had SIX in my vehicle that only has FIVE seatbelts. Lia sat on Sai's lap and they were belted together. It was only a short ride to the Fine Arts Center, which is where we "landed" at about 6:50.

May 28 LINKS Celebration

Thursday:  I was invited to attend the assembly honoring the Unified Champion Schools L.I.N.K.S. Celebration over at Meadow Brook Elementary School because Aidan Paul was a participant this year. Neither Kelly or Dylan could attend because of their work schedules, so I got to attend kind of in their place. 

It was quite an assembly! Kindergarten through fifth grade student involved in this program all attended the assembly, sitting on the gym floor with their particular class. Aidan smiled from ear to ear when he saw me!

Aidan kind of "slid" in to his place on the gym floor.

I should have been listening closer to what L.I.N.K.S. was all about. I heard a lot about being helpers and including students that might feel left out of activities, etc. This is a volunteer program--not all of the students participate.

Isn't Aidan growing up so fast?!

The T-shirts they were all wearing said: "Play Unified. Live Unified." A very good goal for children to aspire to.

Each class was called to the front separately and received a round of applause for their service.

Aidan did very well during the entire ceremony. He seems to have quite a few friends, which is a happy thing.

I believe the fellow walking behind Aidan is his friend Trayvon (I'm probably misspelling his name), and I believe he and Aidan have been in every grade together in the same class.

After the assembly was finished, all of the participants were invited to go outside and choose a freeze pop. It looks like Aidan chose a cherry one.

I love this picture of these two! Good job, Aidan!
 

May 26 Tuesday's Kids

Tuesday (Duh):  I guess it's officially "summer" since the Memorial Day celebration was yesterday (even though the actual date isn't until May 30). But ... the weather has finally warmed up, it has stopped the endless rain cycle, and it's actually SUNNY in Grand Rapids, Michigan. !!

The kids and I didn't do anything very special today after school. I just like hanging around with them (as long as they aren't all talking at me at once!) and hearing them interact with each other. It's very apparent that the three "older" kids adore the youngest Pahman. It's sweet to watch them "take care" of him. He eats it up too, most of the time!

I brought "Sleeping Queens" today because Erin really likes this game a lot. She told me the other day that there is now a "Sleeping Queens 2" card game! I'll have to check into that. Erin clobbered me in the game we played together, and THEN Aidan won the next game!

Gregory challenged me to a game of "ChesT" with his Jurassic Park Chess set. I finally checkmated him, but he had fun during the whole game anyway. He is really picking up on this game!

THEN, Aidan Paul challenged me to a game ... and I made more STUPID moves than I believe I have ever made playing this game ... but I still eventually won ... but just barely.  We almost had a draw.

I love you guys ... you, too, Brendan (although not pictured). Thankful to be your grandma.

May 25 Memorial Day Parade

Monday:  I drove downtown to watch the Memorial Day Parade and arrived at about 9:15. I parked my pretty red Honda in the back parking lot at Acton Institute, after calling Dylan to ask him if it was okay. It's nice and close to Veteran's Memorial Park in Grand Rapids--right across the street on Fulton--so it was a perfect and very free place to park! 

"Ruby" parked behind Acton Institute

I walked around for awhile prior to the 10am parade beginning. Emma and I had talked yesterday about possibly seeing each other down here. Emma's friend Melanie is in the Guard, and it was possible she might march in the parade this morning--it turned out, however, that she declined and I guess most of her group also did because there wasn't a single "Guard" troop that I saw today in the parade.

Jesse was in charge of most of the coordination of the parade. He has done this for years. It is a very frustrating responsibility ... kind of like being the "designated felon" for a business group that doesn't run very well. It seems that every year absolutely NO ONE assists on the planning of this event. And the City of Grand Rapids is also very lax in its participation and planning--everything being very last-minute and critical towards Jesse, when he has done all that he can do with nobody responding to his emails and enquiries, etc. BUT ... here is Jesse consulting with other vets as to some of the details of the set-up. See him?

I love to watch Jesse when he is in charge of an event like this. He takes his role very seriously, and gets the job done. He doesn't naturally "like" people (this is often noted in bold print on many of the T-shirts he wears), but I think he actually does very well when he converses with people. I find that he is polite, professional and very kind. What more can you possibly ask of a person?!?!?

When Jesse arrived at about 8am today he found many homeless people occupying the "park" where the speaking and main event was to occur. Eventually, the GRPD encouraged those people to move elsewhere--and it is very sad that we have homeless people in our city ... but this "park" is not generally well maintained: the American flag is faded and the pulleys on it are broken--apparently the flag is officially to be flown at half mast until noon on Memorial Day ... but this was not taken care of for today's event. 

I was very happy to connect with Emma with spare time before the parade began. She was able to find a close enough parking place too. We each had brought chairs to sit in to watch the parade. Emma hardly sat down, however, because she was busy filming. There was one year when I was downtown, I think with Kaity, for the parade and I took very careful pictures of every group marching, bands playing, bikes riding, etc., as well as all of the speakers too. But today, I just needed to snap a few pictures to remember the day. Besides, I always get all the names of the speakers mixed up because I don't write them down!

Emma does very well with the camera she purchased many years ago. She has a really nice lens that she can use for zooming close up and it gives her a nice quality picture.

Emma and I stayed and listened to the prayers (which were offered in the wonderful name of Jesus Christ), the men who received honors (like "Kent County Veteran of the Year") and spoke to the crowd, etc. The national anthem was sung acapella quite nicely by a young woman. The crowd was made up mostly of families, which was nice to see--people bringing their little kids down here to watch our country and military folk be honored. People were very well behaved, for which I was thankful.

Here's Jesse "tearing down" all of his equipment after the ceremony was finished. He spoke with many veterans throughout the morning--many approaching him and telling him that they appreciated all he did for the event and for the veterans in Kent County. Jesse has been pretty discouraged about the entire veterans organization here--due to the lack of people willing to get on their feet and actually contribute something to their fellow vets. I am very pleased to be the mother of THIS veteran and so thankful that he came home alive from Iraq after his deployment there in 2007-2008. I love him so much.

And dear Emma. What a JOY to be with her today. I can't even find adequate words to explain the deep connection I feel with her, and I am immensely thankful to be her grandma.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for being such a good Father to us. My heart is very full of His love today.