June 26 The JOY of these four

Wednesday:  Kelly brought these dear grandchildren to ME today! Thank you, Kelly! They arrived at 12:45. We ate our lunch and played, and played, and played. These guys do not need any entertaining. Of course, I have a TON of toys! They know where everything is. They need very little help with anything they want to do around here. I love it when they are at my little house.

The older Cal gets--he has just turned FOUR--I notice that he does better playing with Aidan and Erin. Perhaps it's because he is just as "bright" as they are, and nothing gets past him--I'm not sure, but they all seem to enjoy each other (when they are not "spatting" w/each other). Cal has become a little less possessive of toys, and less anxious when something doesn't immediately go his way. These are good things! Way to go, Cal! In the last few weeks, he has taken to "copying" me--just out of the blue, he will repeat something I've said or a gesture I have made. He does this totally seriously too!! It gives him such delight--which cracks me up. I told him I am going to start calling him "Herbie" if he isn't careful ... [Herbie is our little animated hamster--he is sitting on the shelf just to the right of Cal). Cal told me I was not allowed to call him "Herbie" ... so I reminded him (very seriously) that he is also not allowed to call his grandma, "Dummy". Unacceptable, little man!

We had such a nice few hours together here. The older three kids all love to draw and do art. I love how creative they all are, and I love to watch their JOY as they create. It's very heart-warming to me.

Erin wandered around a little bit, not sure what she wanted to do first ... but she did very well just playing with different toys, very content.

Look at Brendan. My heart! I love this child so much it makes my heart ache--does that make sense? You see, when he was just a "Little Fellow", he and I spent quite a bit of time together. He was completely delightful--interested in every little thing--almost never fussy--very easy to be with. He has grown up so much this year. Sixth grade was a good year for him in public school. He carries himself more confidently, and he seems more happy this year. I'm so glad.

I love the way you sketch, Brendan!

What's that mischievous look on your face, Erin? This little person has a great sense of humor, and is so much fun.

AIDAN ... has a brilliant mind. I say that with caution--truly. For just turning seven in March, he reads at an incredible level of maturity. I bet he reads at a Grade 9 or 10 level. He can read through instructions (ie LEGO) and understand completely and then construct the model without help. He likes to build and see how things work. I love to watch him at play. He is rather intense--but--not unreasonably (most of the time). When he is playing, he has a goal in mind (always), and sees it through until he has achieved whatever he set out to do. It's an admirable quality! I try not to worry about how "smart" he is--it's just that, sometimes very brilliant people do not know how to be happy--there is too much going on in their brains. I have a very average brain--the only thing I struggle with is "melancholy" and sometimes depression--but the Lord is working on me for both of those maladies. I almost never try to figure out deep unanswerable questions--Jesus is enough of an answer for me. I can set all my hope on Him.

Aidan had a lot of success making a cool track with magnet tunnels and hills. He had a very clear picture in his mind of what he wanted this to look like--and he was quite happy with the result. Me too!

The next thing I knew, Aidan had reached high on one of the toy shelves and retrieved the marble run. When I build with this thing, I use the pictured instructions--because I need them. Not Aidan! He just messed around enough with the pieces and figured out how to arrange them so that the marbles would flow in the direction he wanted them in order to go down each designated run he had desired.

Cal sat and watched his brother quite a long time. He had his turn to build a little later--and I did help him make his own marble run.

We watched a little bit of the movie: "Two Brothers". It's about twin tiger cubs and what happened to them when they were captured. We only watched about 30 minutes of it, and then it was time to get everyone to the car and drive over to Costco to pick up our pizza (for dinner).

Dylan and Kelly are both at a conference at Dylan's workplace this evening. My "relief" (in the person of Cassie) arrived at 6:30. The kids hadn't met her before (nor had I)--but we liked her immediately. What a nice person she is! She connected right away with the kids, and I felt confident in leaving them in her care. Dylan and Kelly know a LOT of competent, kind, and truly interesting people. I'm thankful they have such nice friends.

I arrived home at about 7:15 and as I pivoted to get out of my car, something twisted in my hip (!!!) and I could barely put any weight on my left leg the rest of the night. I hauled out mom's walker once again and used it! The pain was so intense I was actually gasping with each step. Thankfully, Thursday morning it had calmed down quite a bit. I am thankful for Physical Therapy and am praying that these sessions and home exercises with resolve this pain.

June 22 with KT

Saturday:  I spent a brief time with Kaity-Girl today. She is going to be at Camp Greenwood all next week; so I won't see her again until her 12th birthday. We had a nice time together today. We played one of our longest ever games of UNO, which I won; and then Kaity won the next two games. 

Kaity told me she had no water bottle to take with her to camp next week. Naturally, she remembered that a new water bottle was on her birthday gift list, and she was sitting right at this desk with me when it was ordered (!!!); so I relented, and gave it to her today.

Kaity was very "fussy" about what exactly this water bottle HAD to look like. She was very pleased to find an official NFL Lions logo bottle on-line, which fit into our little budget! 

I love you so much, Kaity; and I will be praying for you all week while you are at camp. She was telling me that one of her favorite things at camp is when they sing songs and dance to them. She remembers singing: "Days of Elijah". I told her I knew that song too! I asked her if she knew who ELIJAH was--but she did not. Some time this week, I'm going to look up the lyrics to that song as well as downloading a good version of it onto my playlist. I'm going to attempt to briefly tell her the Bible stories contained in the lyrics--one story at a time. Good Biblical truth combined with music is a powerful thing!

June 22 Erin's Party

Saturday:  Everyone had a great time at Erin's 6th birthday party today. Kaity intended to come with me, but she had not slept very well Friday night; so I picked up the gifts for Erin from Kaity and headed over to the party solo.

 It was a lot of fun to listen to the conversations between 6-year-old girls, talking up a storm with their ideas, playing "house" with each other, and sharing secrets. Pretty cute, all of them.

I took quite a few pictures--all with my phone camera today, starting with the cutting of the birthday cake. Lunch was served beforehand, but I didn't take a single picture during that time--I was too busy eating I think.

Here is Erin as we sang her "Happy Birthday."

Isn't she the sweetest? I love her so much.

Erin waited patiently until everyone finished singing ...

Then came the huffing and the puffing--to blow out those candles ... but it was tougher than it looked.

Kelly finally lifted Erin so that she was above the cake--which worked very nicely. The little girl to the right of Erin is her friend, Emmaline. The next girl is a close friend too, but I can't remember her name.

The cake, from Costco, was very delicious! I could have eaten a much bigger slice--which Kelly did offer to me, but I took a small slice instead (because of NOT wanting to spoil my diet). 

Kelly offered all of the kids their choice of popsicles AND cake; so most of them had their popsicle first and then they ate their slice of cake.

I asked Erin to pose so that I could get a picture of her in her pretty sparkly gold dress.

And here is Mr. Cal, roaring like the scary T-Rex that he is!

Time for gifts!!!

Erin did a very nice job with her gifts. She has a sweet little heart.

Here is Aidan being a tough guy, doing a spread-eagle on his huge window.

Erin had lots of nice presents to open. She was super interested in each one of them.

I'm pretty sure this is a Polly Pocket's set from one of her best chums ...

And look at this great art set! Markers, crayons, colored pencils, paints! WOW.

Here is Erin opening up the card from Kaity, along with Kaity's siblings (Erin's cousins). They sent a very pretty card, and wrapped up many of Kaity's LOL dolls that she no longer plays with. They are really cute, and Erin loves LOL's.

Erin was so pleased.

I had given her gifts on Tuesday (the actual date of her birthday); but I felt I just couldn't come empty-handed to a birthday party; so I picked up this watercolor set for Erin. She seemed to like it very much. Look at little Cal watching everything. He was such a good listener today! 

Erin's party was from 11am - 2pm. I left the party a little after 1:00. I needed to check and see if Kaity was going to be coming over at her usual afternoon time, and I was feeling overly exhausted and decided to go home and take a brief nap before going over to Kaity's. 

This was such a nice party for Erin. She is very blessed to be born into this sweet family. 
 

June 20 Kaitlynn and Kenzie

Thursday:  I was scheduled to pick Kaity up from Jesse today at our usual 3:30; but I was running a little late--plus, Jesse messaged me that Kaity was taking a nap and he would have her text me when she woke up. It's a good thing it worked out that way because at 4:00, the tornado sirens blasted, and a heavy rain began to fall--so heavy, I couldn't even see across the street. I hate driving in that stuff! Plus, I really have no place to "shelter" in a mobile home ("manufactured" , "double-wide", whatever you want to call it) because there are no basements. I was doing my PT exercises in my laundry hallway when the sirens went off. It's a pretty narrow hallway with no outside windows, so I just continued to exercise and ... I prayed that all would be safe.

Jesse texted me that Kenzie came over and woke Kaity up and that they were playing. Could I come at 4:30? I answered that I would come when "all was clear" tornado-wise. In the meantime, Kaity messaged me and asked if Kenzie could come over too. 

SO ... I picked KT and Kenzie up at about 4:45. We came over to my "hot" house where the girls played and had a lot of fun. I took a few pictures of them. We also played a game of "HEDBANZ" together, which is always a lot of fun to do.

The girls built a track for our little battery-operated cars. They reinforced the hills with MagnaTiles and raced the cars around for awhile. It took them a bit to come up with the layout and a successful run; but their design worked quite well in the end!

They also played a bit with PhotoBooth; however, I thought they would take a lot more pictures with it than they did--this is the only one!

We drove over to Altitude and the girls jumped from about 7-8:00. There were not many other kids there tonight, so there was a lot of space to do their jumps. I was so thankful Kenzie was here with Kaity. Kaity is a very social person, and Kenzie has been a good friend to her. They have their little "spats" at times, but I am always thankful when they mend their friendship and continue on.

Why is Kaity's mouth open wide in the photo above? She is YELLING at me: "HEY!!!" I think she is indicating (!!) that I am NOT to take any pictures of her while jumping. Hmm.

There was one time tonight that Kaity walked over to me--I think it was in my house as we were getting ready to leave for Altitude--but she came close and gave me the biggest hug--it was very spontaneous and it touched me deep in my heart. I love our Kaity so much.