November 8 These Kiddos

Friday:  How on earth is it Friday again already?! Yikes. It's been a long week--mostly because Terry is still struggling to recover from his total knee replacement, and my sister is more and more confused by the day; her dementia is progressing, and it's difficult for her to understand situations that are new or different. Terry is NEVER sick, so this past three weeks have really been unusual for Ruthanne to deal with. Terry is in a lot of pain, due to both of his knees, and Ruthanne has been left alone (because Terry is sleeping) much of the day. I could be of no help to her today because Fridays are dedicated to taking care of a few of my grandkids, and Dylan and Kelly really count on me to come through for them each week (which I am glad to do!).

I picked Young Cal up from his dad at 11:30 and we came over to my house to play. Here are a few snapshots of our time together:

I was thankful that Cal was interested in building a nice layout for our wooden trains today. We worked on it together. I think it turned out very nice. I have to be careful NOT to mess too much with Cal while he is designing his track. He has an idea in his mind and does NOT want to be influenced to change it in any way. I did sneak a few tracks in when he wasn't looking--just so that the track would hook together properly!

Cal is a good little builder, isn't he?

We played trains for awhile, but then wandered back to the toy room and got out our cars.

I think Cal goes beyond the rest of my grandsons in his love of cars--I thought Chris and Matt were crazy about them--but this little guy will play and play and PLAY with them, looking each one over, asking questions about what model or type of vehicle it is, etc. Sometimes I have to kind of "fudge" on the answer because I truly don't know very much about cars.

We brought some of our vehicles out to the train layout and played with them there too.

Cal likes to read this little book about farm animals--it has grooved mazes going from one part of the farm to the next ... Cal loves to do the mazes. We have a very tiny micro-motorcycle that fits perfectly for the "track" and he zooms it around and around ...

We also played in my room for awhile with a set of Duplo blocks, made an interesting little road layout with them and raced micro machines on it. I forgot to take pictures of that. We also watched, "Toy Story," which Cal announced (after it was finished) that he did NOT like one bit!

We needed to be back at Cal's house in time to get Aidan and Erin from the bus stop. Cal fell completely asleep quickly into our drive. I sang praise songs to him which he sang along with me just briefly before nodding off to sleep.

Erin stepped off the school bus wearing this sleeveless little dress today! It was only 58 degrees! I asked her if she was cold and she gave me the most quizzical look! I touched her arms and they were actually WARM. Wow. She must get that from her very warm mom!

I asked Erin to try on her mom's HIGH heels ... Erin told me she does this all the time ... and then told me that they were just "a little too big" for her.

Oh, my!

Aidan requested that I bring them some blank white paper this week because they were "all out", so I brought over a ream of 8.5 x 11 so that they could fold airplanes and make books, etc. Aidan was super pleased. We did end up downstairs in the basement and watched a few episodes of some new "Mario Bros." series. The kids just needed to chill out after school for awhile.

I didn't get to see Brendan today because he and Dylan and headed to Detroit for a basketball tournament through the youth at Holy Trinity. Brendan is on the team this year. I'm so glad for him! I'm so thankful that Dylan and Kelly promote this kind of activity for their kiddos. They have a hoop outside in their driveway, and a few weeks ago I watched Brendan practice taking shots. He's improving quite a bit, AND it looks like he enjoys it (which is most important). 

Love this family.