Desperate measures ...

I'm sure you've heard it said that desperate times call for desperate measures ... "desperate" might be a bit of an exaggeration of our situation, but let me explain. We are into day 20 of having Diana and the Pahman grandchildren home. Everyone is quite a bit more than tired. The children are exhausted from going back and forth between families who want to spend time with them, sleeping at either of the grandparents' houses, being away from their own beds and toys, etc.

Last evening, the kids and I drove over to see Grandpa Pahman and Uncle Shane for one last visit before the kids leave to go back to Texas on Wednesday. We walked over to a school playground and stayed only briefly ~ it was too hot and there was little shade. We walked back to Grandpa Pahman's apartment and played with the children there for awhile, and then took everyone out to eat some fast food over at Wendy's. Christopher did real well with everything that we did. Emma was just completely out of sorts and absolutely nothing pleased her (nothing!) ~ and I think Matthew was just too exhausted to care!

We came home here and got ready for bed, had a snack, and then we just watched a movie to kind of wind the day down. In the three weeks the kids have been here, we have only watched some very short videos on only a few of the days. But I know how difficult it is to get the kids to bed in this Michigan daylight, so I put on one of their favorite movies and we got out quiet toys to play with for awhile. We did our usual bedtime routine after the movie, but sleep was not easy to come by! Oh well. I think each of the kids ended up getting 8 hours, but not all at the same time.

I had thought about taking the kids back to the John Ball Zoo today ~ they had gone last week with the Hands and had such a great time ~ but when I saw how tired they still were this morning I decided against it. Instead, I we just stayed here and played. I got out some balloons ... you know, the cheap blow-um-up-kind of ones that are 99 cents per package. Emma wanted me to put faces on them and we ended up making whole families of balloons. I know this sounds pathetic, but we were able to spend a pretty fun hour just drawing faces on the balloons and chasing them around the house. Dylan came through the family room as we were designing our balloons and I was using a weird voice for the baby balloon ~ and he gave me one of those raised-eye looks ~ and I said to him, "Hey! Desperate measures!" And he laughed. After riding home with us last night with the three kids banging around the toys they received at Wendy's (and by the way, whoever designed this particular toy ought to be shot, or at least arrested ~ it was the most obnoxious!), I think he knows just how crazy and chaotic three small children can be!

We took our balloon families downstairs to the coolness of the playroom and constructed a block house for them, which ended up being used as a daycare center for the baby balloons.
Here are the baby balloons going inside the daycare center through one of the doors we made. Hey! I know this is pathetic, but I'm telling you ... we are very exhausted here at the Jones Junction!
Here is Emma building one of the chimneys for the daycare center ...
After lunch, we went outside with our sidewalk chalk and spent a good hour making nice pictures. This mouse was drawn by Emma, without any assistance at all from me. She was very carefully following Ed Emberley's instructions of how to make a mouse.
The boys were at the end of the driveway playing trucks and generally getting about as dirty as possible. In between drawing and trucking, we consumed some very nice giant freeze pops while sitting in the shade of the garage. We also walked throughout our entire yard, in and out of pathways and high grass (which desperatedly needs mowing!), looking for any turtles or toads who might be visiting. We didn't find any, but the hunt was very fun anyway.

The Hands picked up the kids up from us at about 3:00 this afternoon. Di and the kids are due to come back here tomorrow afternoon, spend the night, and then we need to leave for Chicago at 6:30 Wednesday morning. We would appreciate your prayers that our last 24 hours together would be sweet, fun-loving and peaceful. I'm dreading the good-byes at the airport, so if you could pray about that for me as well, I would really appreciate it.