Our Thursday with Nathan and Nia

Two of the Jones grandchildren, Nathan and Nia, are here in Grand Rapids visiting the grandparents for a couple of weeks! Grandpa McNeil brought them over to visit us a little before 9:00 this morning.
Nia was a little bit upset with the situation, and I thought we might even have some real tears. We quickly brought them both into the family room to play trains ... whew! No tears, but Queenie definitely DID NOT want to be put down. For most of the day, she attached herself like glue to either grandpa or me.

We had a mid-morning snack of apples and yogurt. I thought I was going to be in trouble for a minute when Nathan looked at his apples and said, "Dip dip pwease." I did not have any of that special very yummy fruit dip ~ you know, the one with the marshmallow and whipped cream ~ but I did have vanilla yogurt that I put into a little bowl and it seemed to satisfy Mr. Nathan just fine!

Nathan said, "Cute fish, granny."
"What's his name?"

So we had a talk about Nemo and then later in the day,
we did watch part of the video ...

Nia hugged tightly to her bunny all during snack time ...

We split our time between the family room and the basement play room. Nathan loves cars and had a great time getting them all out of the suitcase and zooming them around our rug.

We thought Nia would want to play with the cars too, but she really really did not want to leave Grandpa's arms! Nathan kept bringing her various toys for her to look at and hold. He did a nice job of sharing today.

For some reason, Nathan lined up all of our little stuffed animals against the wall, and then had Boo bear (Nathan's really HUGE special bear friend) come and pick out who he wanted to be friends with. I missed some good pictures of Boo meeting all of these new friends. I didn't want to interrupt Nathan's play by snapping a picture; but it was pretty cute to see him talking to Boo and explain who all of these new animals were. We were also playing music and had our instruments out and at one point, Boo played a pretty wild tambourine!

Nia was pretty tired and went down for a nap after lunch. She slept for two hours!

It looks like Grandpa should have taken a nap too! I took this picture just after Grandpa got Nia up from her nap. She was real snuggly afterwards.

We read some books for awhile. Nia especially liked this one about the fish. Doesn't it look like she is really reading it?

After many warnings about Thomas K. to Nathan, I finally let them be in the same room. It was time for Tommy's cream and Nathan enjoyed watching his tongue lap it up.

Miss Nia finally allowed herself a bit of fun apart from one of us ... but it was really close to 4:00 before she did this. That's okay, though, because we enjoyed snuggling with her.

And this shot of Nathan is just such a typical face for him! He has a great smile. I think grandpa and I did okay for our first visit with these little ones. It's hard to be a long-distant grandparent. Kiddos this young just really do not remember who we are in-between times. It will be good to make some memories, take some pictures, and have some fun for the next few weeks!