July 11 Deer Tracks Junction (cont)

Saturday (continued): After walking past the emus, we entered the PIG area. These little pigs have grown quite a lot in the two weeks between Erin's visit and today. Cal was very pleased to feed them. Look at his happy little face ...

We then walked over to the prairie dog place that has tunnels underneath, but Cal noticed this climbing place right next to it and decided he would prefer to do this ...

He was a little tentative about climbing this rope ladder, but he continued on up until he reached the very top, and then crossed this wiggly bridge. He was very proud of himself.

It was about noon and beginning to get HOT. Cal sat down to rest for just a minute. I reminded him that there were still a bunch of tunnels he hadn't been inside of yet.

We retraced our steps and returned to the biggest playground at the park that has tons of tunnels. Cal had a little green flashlight with him to light up his way ...

I stuck my head inside and caught this picture of him ...

I loved watching Cal climb all over the place. I could hear him talking inside of the tunnels. He had so much fun. "Next time we come, grandma, I'm going to start with the tunnels!"

We left Deer Tracks at about 12:30 and drove over to the Rockford Culver's and enjoyed a very nice lunch together.

I love you, little Cal. You are such an interesting person! Many times, Cal will begin a conversation like this: "Imagine if ..." and then he will go on to say the funniest things!

Thank you, Lord, for these wonderful hours with this dear little grandson. You are so kind, Lord!

July 11 Deer Tracks Junction, #1

Saturday:  Cal and I arrived at Deer Tracks this morning very promptly at 10:02 am! We were one of the very first visitors of the day. We purchased our ticket, as well as food for the animals: 1 cup of carrots, 1 cup of sliced apples, and 3 seed sticks. I had talked it over with Cal and we decided to visit the budgies first so that they would not be full of other people's seeds by the time we got to them--but we were so surprised that when we went through the passage to their pavilion, every single parakeet was way up at the top of the roof line and were in no mood to come down. We left them and decided they must still be sleeping ... or something. We told them we would be BACK!

Next, we decided to see the guinea pigs. They are SO cute and make the funniest sounds. Cal got to hold a small guinea who didn't yet have a name. The worker asked Cal what he would name this little one. Without hesitation, Cal said "Squeaky!" The worker told him that was a very good name.

Since the corn house was so near by, we went there next. There was absolutely NO ONE THERE but us! Cal jumped and dug and laughed and played ...

Here he is jumping!

We tried to bury half of him but he kept popping up out of the corn. I finally gave up!

We decided this would be a very nice place to take a snooze ...  but we had too much else to see, so we did not go to sleep.

We returned to the Budgie pavilion and ... YAY! They were awake and ready to eat! It was a little bit crowded with people in here, so we didn't get swamped with six birds at a time or anything--but one time Cal had four: two on his stick and one on each arm! Look at Cal's cute little face.

The goats were next ... see how timid Cal was with these goats? They are so hilarious and a little bit overwhelming as they stick their heads through these holes ...

Look at Cal's reaction!

Then we moved on to see if there were any bunnies. When I was here two weeks ago with Erin, there were zero babies. Today, however, we saw two kind of small bunnies and asked if we could hold them, but the worker told us those little ones had just been "put away" and were over stimulated for the time being. That was okay ...

Cal was content to pet the bigger rabbits who were cooling themselves by the fan.

The EMU totally crack me up. First of all ... don't be thinking that you can just casually feed them a carrot. NO WAY. They ATTACK the carrot and practically bit your hand off! Seriously! But they are so funny to watch.

I think they are so ugly that they are cute.

As I was walking away, the whole crowd started running and following me (thankfully they were behind the fence!).

The next post will show our visit to the pigs and also the cool tunnels Gregory went in ...
 

July 10 Gregory's sleepover

Friday evening and Saturday morning: We arrived here at my house for Cal's sleepover by about 4pm Friday afternoon. I had laid out a few of the toys that we hardly play with anymore to see if I could "trigger" Cal's good memories of them and perhaps he would play with them again. It worked!

We worked on a train layout for quite a long time. This picture only shows about half of our finished track. We were a bit distracted by all of the birds outside my side window and kept looking out trying to identify the name of each bird. Cal is quite passionate about this. He says that he and his dad take walks around their neighborhood and use Dylan's phone app that can identify birds by the sounds they make (I have this app too). I love knowing that Cal and Dylan do this. Cal says Erin enjoys it as well. Both Erin and Cal are very good at imitating bird calls. I remember a time when Brendan was very young (perhaps 3) when he and I were at the beach and he called out to the seagulls like he was an ACTUAL seagull himself and they all came to him! He thought that was pretty great.

I keep a small bowl on my front porch to place peanuts there for the squirrels to enjoy. We had a long talk with one of my squirrels this morning (but, naturally, I missed that photographing that).

We began a foosball "tournament" and Cal put his heart and soul into each game. He's a pretty fierce player!

Of course, Cal has all kinds of ways he uses to count what each field goal is worth (point-wise). I have to attempt to at least clamp down on his outrageous rules so that he gets used to playing the REAL game. But it's hilarious to see what he will come up with to score TWO points instead of just ONE.

I promised Cal I would make him tacos for dinner. He was super pleased. This kid can really put away a LOT of food, and he is not a fussy eater at all. Emma and Chris were similar to this at this age as well. Matt was a little more particular about what he would eat, but it wasn't a problem. Brendan and Erin eat a lot of variety as well. As far as Aidan is concerned, I'm just glad he loves my homemade French toast and corn on the cob!

Later on in the evening, Cal requested that we play the game of "LIFE". In the picture below, one of his ACTION cards told him to pick an opponent (there was only me to choose from) and have a dance contest to see WHO was the best ... Cal won without any difficulty whatsoever, and the bank awarded him 30K for his super interesting dance "moves."

Cal's occupation was an ATHLETE, so he pretended he was a pro football player (of course). My occupation was a fashion designer. Cal ended up with twice the amount of $$ that I did! He also had THREE puppies and THREE children--we had to load an extra car for him to move around. He decided that one of his babies could be the driver. His pet puppy was driving the primary car (with the parents in the back seat).

After we played LIFE, we had a small root beer float (YUM), and got ready to watch our movie. We didn't start watching the movie until some time after 8:00. I was trying to be sure to wear Cal down before putting him in bed so that perhaps it wouldn't be too long or painful a process. We decided to watch: "LEGO, Batman". Yuck. I would so much rather watch a cute little story! Sigh. Cal went to bed and was soundly sleeping by about 9:20. Yes!

However, at promptly 6am, he was up and about. He was super quiet, cuddled himself up on the couch with my very soft blanket and waited for me to crawl out of bed. He never once disturbed me, so I laid in bed an extra 20 minutes!

After breakfast, Cal challenged me to a game of CHESS. I did end up checkmating our poor dear, but he handled like a little man.

Before we knew it, it was 9:30 and time to leave for Deer Tracks!

July 7 HERBIE!!!!

Tuesday:  FIRST, I'm going to tell you what happened near the end of our time at my house. I was picking up all of the toys that had been scattered around and requested that the kiddos come into the main room and watch about 15 minutes of "The Road Runner and Coyote" cartoons so that I could accomplish the clean-up task successfully. Brendan and Erin were sitting on the couch, Gregory and Aidan were on the chairs in front of my computer screen. Suddenly, I heard a very excited voice shouting: "HERBIE! HERBIE!!!" I came running into the room immediately. Erin was pointing up to the tippy top of my bookshelf, and peaking out (from behind a bunch of shells) was our very own repeat-after-you Herbie toy that I had LOST about 15 months ago. All of us had looked repeatedly, but he could not be found. I truly had given up ever finding him again.

We flipped the "On" switch, and sure enough, Herbie could still repeat after us in his funny little voice. We all cracked up. I gave Erin a super BIG hug. She was our hero of the day.

The three younger kiddos wanted another chance to make a "movie" of their own using some toy props around my house (I have an unlimited number of items that can be used to make an interesting video). They couldn't decide who would go first, so they requested that I make a video since Cal said he would go 2nd. I grabbed "Sunny" and sat down and had a beauty pageant with her for about three minutes. Erin sat with me and joined in my video. You see, no one wanted to be first because they hadn't decided what their story line would be this week. Cal offered to go second, and everyone took him up on his offer.

Here are some random photos of the kids watching their own videos and enjoying themselves hugely.

Look how delighted Cal is while watching himself on my computer!

Brendan, bless his heart, brought books along with him to keep him occupied today. He does really well with the little kids, but he is fourteen and not really interested in the same stuff the younger kids are. I try to connect with him throughout the day. We did watch a "Paco" video with the puppeteer who created him years ago. The creator is a very good puppeteer and cracks the kids up. We finally we able to find the video of him using a little hand puppet that he calls "Paquito" that has no movable mouth--he just squeals and makes the cutest noises to communicate.

Erin was in a very creative mood today. She was cutting and taping all kinds of things! She made a paper camera for one of my small stuffed animals that actually hung around its neck. Did I get a picture of it? Sigh. Nope.

Erin really enjoys all of the little puppets I have here. She played a long time with Lamb Chop today.

Look at her beautiful smile.

Erin was super helpful today! She helped clean up

some of the toys she had played with, without a single complaint.

Aidan gets a real bang out of both my PIG puppets--he's a real fan of pigs in general and has quite a few stuffed pigs of his own. I love to watch him pretend and make up stories. And I love to hear him really laugh and laugh. He has a very good sense of humor.

Here is everyone watching the Paco video--I forget his creator's name.

We ate a bunch of good food--some of which was actually healthy! By about 3:15, we decided it was time to return to their place to continue our day. It was getting a little bit too warm at my house. So ... that's what we did.

Thankful to be able to enjoy these grandchildren. I hope to never take it for granted that I have good enough health to continue to play and have fun with them.