February 2 Special Sunday

Sunday:  Dylan is presently out of town, due back later tonight. Kelly was invited to a baby shower for the afternoon, so she asked if I could come over for a few hours this afternoon to be with the kiddos. Since Brendan's birthday is tomorrow (and I have a scheduled minor surgery), I figured I would bring his card and gifts today for him to open. 

I love these pictures of these grandchildren so much it makes my heart ache . . . the aching isn't a BAD ache ... it's just that I love them so much and am so thankful for them.

Brendan is opening the video game he asked for: "Dragon Quest III" for Nintendo Switch. Erin and Cal look very pleased about it too!

FOUR beautiful grandchildren ... such a blessing.

Look at Aidan being "king of the castle!" This is Brendan opening up his card from me--which, by the way, took me THREE hours to make! I don't know why cards take so long for me to make ... but I want them to be JUST RIGHT, you see.

Brendan read the card to his siblings ...

Then Brendan opened up the 3 volume "Charlie Brown" comic series--these are the very early Charles Schulz drawings of Charlie Brown and gang ... they are classic.

All of the kids thought this was a wonderful gift! Yay!

Brendan is an excellent reader and loves books--a true kindred spirit in that regard.

And then he opened the Percy Jackson books (Vol 4 and 5) and read me some of the humorous chapter titles!

Brendan has always had a keen sense of humor--I love this so much about him.

After the gift opening, Kelly left for the baby shower and I surprised Erin with a "Candy Land" game she has been asking for. We played several games of it! Erin is very fun to play games with.

Cal wanted me to play downstairs with him; so we did dinosaurs for awhile. Naturally, there was a big dinosaur WAR and everyone got killed. "They are ALL dead, gramma!" Cal told me this with great happiness!

Brendan brought down his Charlie Brown books to read while we all played together ...

Aidan was super pleased with these books too. Aidan is a tremendously good reader and loves comics.

I love to see this child smile ... he is SO intense in his little personality ... so DRIVEN it seems. I'm glad he loves to read. I love Aidan to pieces.

We built Cal's dinosaurs a CAVE for them to live in--but wouldn't you know it? A major storm came by and totally DESTROYED the cave. Imagine that!!!

Erin and I played a few games of "Guess Who?" as well. I love playing games with these guys.

Kelly returned home a little after 4:30 in the afternoon. The kiddos were glad to see her and I was too. I am still not very strong after that nasty round of vertigo I went through the last three days or so; I was glad to drive home and lay my body down. 

January 30 Changes ...

 Thursday:  My sister and Terry have moved south to Georgia to be with Shari, Mark and their grandkids. Their house here is still very full of their "stuff" and is in need of selling--but Terry and Mark are going to handle that down the road a bit. It's strange, after almost two years of them being .5 miles away to now have them move so far away. However, I am thankful this has happened. Ruthanne's memory issues are progressing more and more. Having never been in my sister's company for more than a few hours at a time over the last 50+ years, I was completely naive how exactly it would work seeing her on an almost-daily-basis. I am so sad about her memory loss. I had no idea it could be this difficult to deal with. Terry does an amazing job orchestrating their lives! However, when Terry required surgery back in October, it became very evident that both of them needed better care in their home than they were getting here. Thankfully, Shari and Mark have a "cottage" on their property, about 50' from the main house, and with a tiny bit of renovation it will be quite suitable for Ruthanne and Terry. They really loved being at Calvary Church--but they need more than just a once-a-week uplifting. They are both terribly lonely. I think being around their grandchildren will be a good thing! I think Terry will feel relieved of the 24/7 burden of taking care of Ruthanne--they will have good support there.

The other HUGE change in my life is that my Kaity doesn't want to come over any more. She is 12.5 and there is really nothing she is interested in doing over at my house. It's not that there is nothing to do here--she just doesn't want to do those particular things. PLUS ... she is a very "social" person--and we have had some of her friends come over and I've fed them and played games, etc.; but Kaity just isn't interested in coming here anymore. What does that feel like for me?

Sad ...

Depressing ...

Lonely ...

It was inevitable ... I knew eventually Kaity would not want to come over anymore. I knew this! I just was hoping it would be off in the future somewhere more distant than ... N O W. I wracked my brain to figure out "fun" stuff we could do together; but it's difficult to compete with the instant entertainment she receives from social media and video games. My heart aches. I feel lost.

SO ... I am asking the Lord to help me know what to do now. How can I serve Him? Should I get more involved at church? They are always looking for helpers. And I do not want to WASTE these last years of my life doing ... nothing ... nothing of lasting value in His eyes. 

Please show me, Lord. Help me to know who to talk to and where to start. Help me not to be afraid ... and please help me with this loss.

January 24 with Cal

Friday: Whatever "bug" attacked me about 9 days ago has stubbornly held onto my system--I am better than I WAS ... but that's not saying much. I was truly hoping young Cal would be in a subdued mood today (a rare thing), and I asked the Lord to give me the strength I would need--and Cal was just about as laid back as I have ever seen him be! We stayed in my "dining room" almost the entire three hours he was here with me. We watched birds. We watched the squirrels! We played with magnets. We built castles! We laughed and played ... all while keeping a close eye on the bird activity outside. It was so much fun.

I will say this about Cal--he is interested in almost EVERYTHING. He loves books (my kind of guy)! He loves toys! He has a great sense of humor! Jeeps! What's NOT to like?

We kept trying to "catch" a bird inside my window feeder and snap it's picture; but they were too quick for us every single time! 

We also talked about dinosaurs and got a box of dinosaur cards out to play with. On one side of the card there is a picture of ONE dinosaur; but when you flip the card over, it becomes part of a giant dinosaur puzzle. Cal was very intrigued by this and was determined to put it all together.

We moved all of our cards to the floor where there was more room to assemble them.

Mr. Cal was super pleased when we had accomplished our goal. He loves dinosaurs.

I took out the MagniCubes and started playing with them and Cal took right over. We had built a dragon a few weeks ago, but Cal announced that TODAY we were building a castle.

It's very cool to watch this little one's brain at work. He sizes the whole project up in his head and then he goes at it with all of his heart.

Look how proud he is of his castle! Such a cutie.

I also have a set of tiny magnets (100 of them) that are very strong magnets. Cal told me I had to go into another room and hide my face so that he could add these 100 magnets to his castle as a surprise. Okay, then.

See the little round magnets Cal added to his castle? He was so pleased!

Cal fell asleep on the ride over to his house, but he woke up and was completely re-charged.

We played and waited for the other kids to come home from school. Brendan is always the first one home, since he is in Middle School.

Aidan and Erin get off their bus by about 4:10. These guys were all SO HUNGRY today! I usually bring fresh cantaloupe or strawberries or something healthy for them to eat; but this is not a good time of year in Michigan to find fresh fruit that is actually eatable. SO ... I brought Rice Krispie treats instead. Erin and I played a few games of "Sleeping Queens", and the folks came home at about 6:00 with yummy baked chicken for us to enjoy.

Back home at my house, I caught this sneaky squirrel eating all of the peanuts in my window feeder. We're friends, so it's okay. I talk to him while he looks intently at my face the whole time. I'd like to pet him sometime; maybe in the spring.

January 10 A "normal" Friday

Friday:  It was just me and Cal today at my house. This little guy really enjoys having the place to himself. He is not a difficult child to entertain at all--actually, none of the four kiddos are difficult to spend time with because they are interested in everything, they love to learn, and they love to play. Brendan is not a little boy anymore--which makes "play" quite different at almost 13. I really have to figure out more age-appropriate stuff for him to do when he is here. I haven't figured it out yet ... nor have I done a very good job with my Kaity-Girl about this very issue. BUT Brendan and Kaity are very different personalities with very different abilities and interests. Brendan is a reader. Kaity is not. They both love games, but they prefer video games of which I have ZERO. 

But back to Cal ...

He really loves to play with my toy treehouse. Erin told me last week that she was going to get a REAL treehouse in her back yard this summer! They do have some very nice trees in the back yard, but an official treehouse can be quite complicated to build AND a bit expensive. I didn't tell her all of that.

Cal and I decided to make our back yard scene a little more dangerous today. So we played out a whole scenario of alligators living under the pedestrian bridge. We brought "Happy" over as well as "Tiny grump" and our wooden alligator (we haven't named him!) and had fun making up a story about how dangerous the campground had become because of the invading alligators.

Cal loves "GARY" (scary) stories; so we kept this up for quite awhile.

Cal had some leftover spaghetti for lunch. He had a new, very fancy T-Rex shirt on today; so I convinced him to wear this paper towel "bib" to catch his spaghetti drips. He ate every single noodle! His "bib" was bright red and a real sloppy mess by the time he had finished eating, so I was glad it all landed on the paper towel instead of his new shirt.

After lunch, Cal began to construct a track for our cars. I helped him a little bit because he was having difficulty getting it to work properly. Once it was constructed, we raced cars for a very LONG time. Earlier, we had picked out about 35 cars (our favorite ones) and had them all line up to go to the gas station for a fill-up and car wash. Some of them had their tires checked too. It was a $10 charge--we had to send some of our cars to the bank because they didn't have the money available with them. So we had cars taking side roads to the bank and then getting back in line. It was a very big deal and took up almost an hour of our play time.

Cal! I think you love playing with cars as much as I do!

We drove home to Cal's house and arrived at about 3:15. Cal had fallen asleep in the car, so I decided to shovel the driveway. We had received perhaps 2" of snow throughout the day and I figured I shovel it out of the way before the kids came home. I was able to get in their front door! YAY! Jeeps. All of these weeks using their key WRONGLY was so ... stupid of me.

I brought "Sleeping Queens" with me so that Erin and I could play it. She loves this game. We had a great time playing together.

You are so precious, Erin!

Meanwhile in the basement, Aidan was intensely playing a video game. I already forget what game it was! 

I was attempting to get a good photo of Erin and little Cal kept photobombing my attempts! Plus, I couldn't find Erin's face for her hair--I showed her on my phone this upper left picture. She thought it was funny, but she did take her hands and moved her hair to the side--much better, Erin!

Aren't these cute pictures of these little people?!!