Kaity's Party

Saturday, June 29:  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KAITY! 

Kaity had a splashing good birthday party at her house! Her folks rented this inflatable bounce/water slide. The kiddos had an absolute blast with it.

 Kaity's friends from her Kindergarten class came over, and so did her cousin, Brendan! Yes!

 Brendan loves to play in the water, and he and Kaity love each other to pieces. 

 At one point, there were TEN young children running around on this contraption! The parents sat it out while keeping the children safe, monitoring how many kids were in the pool, etc.

 It was a very hot day too! One of the hottest we've had so far this season. Finally!!

 The young boy in this picture (below) is NICO. He and Kaity are crazy about each other--they are good friends and enjoy each other very much. Next to Nico is EVIE, and on the other side of Kaity is TEAGAN. 

 M'aya (far left) and another friend (I think her name is Kayla) joined in for the next picture.

 And here is our birthday girl, KAITLYNN JANE! I love her beautiful smile in this picture. She had so much fun at her party. Her friends brought over some super nice presents for Kaity too.

 A few more pictures of Kaity and Brendan ...

 Emma convinced Christopher to come out and enjoy the water slide. While the little kids were inside opening gifts, she and Chris bombed down the slide. It was really nice to see them enjoy each other for a little while. It's difficult to be siblings ... teenagers are no exception!

After Kaity's party ended, Emma came with me and spent the night at my house. We watched "War Room." Emma really liked the movie. I had seen it only once before and it was super good for me to see it again. The theme of the movie is--How do we fight our battles? Who is our real enemy? What kind of war games do we play? We learned that as Christians, our warfare has to be PRAYER--first submitting our lives to Christ, confessing our sin of self-reliance, and surrendering our broken circumstances to the ONLY ONE Who can rescue us, those we love, and redeem heartbreaking situations for His glory. Please help Emma and I to be better prayer warriors! You've been SO GOOD to us. I'm asking you to give Emma a good friend, someone her age, a Christian to hang out with at school, or someone in her neighborhood, or next fall at KTCT. Emma needs Christian friends, Lord. Please hear my prayer.

Three hours of cleaning

Friday, June 28:  It is the day before Kaity's seventh birthday. Kaity is having an outdoor birthday party tomorrow over at her house. She has been trying to get her room clean for several weeks just in case any of her friends want to see it and play for a little while there.

Kaity has a LOT of stuff! I told her that Emma and I would help her clean her room this afternoon, and that is exactly what we did. We dedicated three hours to the task and were only one minute and 29 seconds beyond our three-hour limit. We were pretty pleased.

Diana made a good list for us about what to do with things Kaity no longer wanted to keep, or clothes that no longer fit her, broken toys, etc. We followed her wishes exactly.

Kaity helped quite a bit with decision-making and she was actually quite agreeable to throwing old and broken stuff in the trash. 

The three hours rushed on by. Pretty soon, the floor was cleared of debris, two full trash bags were out in the trash, two boxes were assembled of stuff to either give away or sell, laundry was put in the hamper in the bathroom, storage containers were stacked in her closet, the floor was swept completely, her books were organized on her shelf (thanks to Emma), and her room looked very much improved.

When I had arrived at 1:05 to start this little project, I took one look at the room as it was and felt completely overwhelmed. So right out loud, I asked the Lord to help me keep to the task at hand, be patient with Kaity, and get the job done. Thanks so much, Lord, for listening to my prayer for help and for being with us today as we cleaned. 

Our sensitive Little Fellow

Thursday, June 27:  I picked Brendan up from his sailing class today only to find an extremely forlorn child (Brendan) sitting at the edge of the dock, head down, holding a broken squirt gun. Evidently, the squirt gun was a vital part of today's sailing fun. Kelly and he had picked out a really great squirt gun prior to coming to class this morning, but as Brendan was filling the cylinder with water, it dropped deep into Reed's Lake where it could not be retrieved. Heartbreak.

Brendan has a really sensitive young heart. When he loves something, he loves it fiercely. And he truly loved this squirt gun! I did not take any pictures of his dear face with tears in his eyes and his chin quivering as he tried to hold back tears. I assured him that we would find out what store he and his mom had gotten the squirt gun and simply get another one! 

Brendan was finally consoled, at least partially. He decided it would be nice to swim a little bit before we went over to Rite Aid to replace his gun. 

 It was FINALLY summer weather today! A beautiful day from start to finish. Reed's Lake is a pretty place, but the lake itself is a bit too "reedy" for me! I just don't favor sea weed and reeds brushing up against my bare skin ... and the water is too cloudy for me too! I'm a bit picky when it comes to swimming in lakes.

 See the little sailboat in the forefront (on the left) of the picture below? These are the kinds of sailboats Brendan gets to go sailing in during his OptiI class.

 Brendan swam for quite awhile, all the time telling me interesting things about aliens and Pokemans ... this child's mind doesn't stop ...

And look at Brendan's beautiful smile, which shows his precious heart ... I love him so much.

 Here are some of the names of the boats that Brendan gets to sail! Today's boat was "Zacca", a true pirate boat! His boat partner today was "Karra", pronounced, "CAR" and then the "a" (short vowel). She was his partner yesterday too!

I called Kelly to get the exact Rite Aid where the squirt gun was purchased, and it was close by Reed's Lake! We were able to pick up a replacement without any trouble at all! We played with our water table and we washed my car! Brendan paid particular attention to my mirrors and did a special number on my car's rear camera!

 When we finished our "work", we relaxed by my rock garden. We found some very cool spider webs and tried to get a good picture.

 We discovered that if we squirted water on my rocks, they changed color and the sun sparkled off them, and they looked shiny. So we proceed to shine up my rocks for the next 30 minutes or so.

 There is something about these simple pleasures ... just sitting in the shade, using our squirt guns on the rocks, talking about the color and the sparkle and the webs ... listening to Brendan's thoughts ... how precious this time is! 

Thank you, dear Lord, for quiet, for Your peace, for this dear grandson.

A beautiful afternoon at the beach

Wednesday evening, June 26:  It's only a 45-minute drive from my house to Grand Haven State Park. We girls decided that it was HIGH time we had a beach afternoon. Ours actually turned out being more of a beach EVENING since we didn't arrive until after 5:00 pm.

The water was freezing. I just couldn't make myself take the plunge! Instead, I dug in the sand and watched the girls from the shore. They were kind of in and out of the water. 

 Kaity really enjoys digging in the sand. Me too.

 But she finally decided she was TOO cold so I bundled her up in a big beach towel and let her warm up.

 A trip to Grand Haven is NOT complete without walking the pier all the way to the end ...

 I love these pictures of the girls up on the dune overlooking the pier ...

 Sadly, we discovered that THIS side of the pier was closed. You see, the cat walk is under reconstruction (FINALLY!!), so a fence has been erected to keep people OFF that part of the pier.

 We decided we would go and get a Frosty at Wendy's and then drive over to the Ferrysburg side of the channel and walk THAT pier instead.

 Aren't those some nice pictures of Kaity and Emma?

 We let Kaity play on the playground for a little while before we left the State Park. They have a pretty nice playground there, and Kaity loves to monkey around on any playground within sight.

 I'm just going to run a few of these pictures of the lighthouse without much comment. It's not like I don't already have 10,000 other pictures of this beautiful place ... but it is one of my favorite places on the planet!

I loved being out here tonight with my dear granddaughters. They are super precious to me ... I'm so thankful we could do this today.