March 7 Cal AND Brendan

Friday:  Wow--was I ever pleasantly surprised to find that I was getting to have both Cal AND Brendan today! It seems that Brendan has a toothache and didn't sleep well last night; so he is home from school. We told him it was his decision whether he wanted to come over here for a few hours with Cal OR if he just wanted to stay at their house alone for a few hours. I was so pleased when he chose to come over here and play with us!

I took a bunch of pictures--we had such a nice time together! Before I left my house to pick up Cal this morning, I put together one of my car tracks and arranged it on my table-top, along with some Magnatiles and dinosaurs! Cal loves this track because the blue car (and we used to also have a red car, but the tires got tangled in Erin's hair a few years back and the car kind of broke after that) is battery powered and goes fast!

Cal and Brendan do really well together, being that Brendan is the oldest and Cal is the youngest. Far less rivalry between them that when it's all three of the younger ones together. Cal adores Brendan. Cal grabbed the top of one of my containers (I keep toy animals inside) to use as his SHIELD and then looked all over the house for a suitable sword. We finally went to my wrapping paper drawer and found an almost empty TUBE that we used as his sword. Cal was super pleased and used both shield and sword to defeat all sorts of enemies that were hiding in my house! Imagine!

Little Cal is a warrior at heart!

Isn't he the cutest little bug you've ever seen?!?!?! 

Meanwhile, Brendan was busy constructing an incredible train layout in the other room:

Cal wasn't interested in trains today but very badly wanted me to go back to the playroom with him and play WAR with our cars. I wasn't sure what he meant at first, but I followed him back there and played WAR with our cars. Here's what the WAR involved. I would choose a Matchbox or Hotwheels car from our car bin, and on Cal's orders, I would roll the car as fast as possible towards the sword and shield of our little warrior. Just so you know--Cal never loses a WAR. So I would roll the car at Cal and he would attack with his shield and sword and completely decimate the car, which would roll over on its side or back ... and then it was declared to be "dead."

You might ask me: "How long did we do this war exercise? How many cars died?" Ah. Good question! I have more than 100 car toys and each and every single one of them was subjected to this fight. There were no survivors.

When we came back out to the main room, Brendan had constructed a MAJOR track layout--the best one ever! Brendan is such an excellent builder.

If Brendan is over here along with Aidan and Erin and Cal, he never gets a chance to build anything! All the little kids offer their "help", which isn't either wanted or needed; and Brendan finally just lets them take over.

This child ... Brendan ... what a treasure you are! My heart loves you, dear grandson.

Near the end of our time at my house, little Cal did decided to build a small track. Thankfully, Brendan was nearing completion of his layout; so this was not a problem. Look at Cal's face. Isn't he a scream?

We drove back over to their house and landed there at about 3:15. I hardly took any pictures the rest of the time we spent together. I had just under an hour to do a few "chores" (isn't that a strange word?). Actually, I don't find washing dishes at all a chore. There is something just so satisfying about cleaning junk off plates and having them sparkle once they are clean. I find it quite therapeutic actually. I know--I am odd. Anyway, I did a bunch of dishes, swept the kitchen floor, tried to pick up some stray toys around the main floor ... and then it was 4:10 and time for Aidan and Erin to come home.

We enjoyed some after school snacks of cucumbers, cantaloupe, strawberries, and an assortment of other things. I can't believe how hungry these kids are after school! 

I worked on folding some "new" paper airplanes over the week and brought samples with me to fly around their house--they have a great house for flying airplanes. Aidan LOVES folding paper. He is an origami extraordinaire! We folded and flew paper airplanes for a solid hour. We had so much fun.

Erin wanted me to see a new "trick" she learned to do on their basement couch, so she finally got me to go down in the basement to watch:

Cal was kind of in Erin's space ... so she had to be a little stern with him in order to demonstrate her trick, which basically consisted of Erin leaping onto the beanbag and doing a somersault off of it.

She was very proud to show me this and did it a few times for me! Cal contained himself for as long as possible, and then he showed me HIS trick which was basically flying off the couch and landing on the beanbag as dramatically as possible ...

You crack me up, Cal!

SO ... I received a message from Dylan and Kelly asking me to deliver the kids to them by 6pm over at Holy Trinity, which I did. As I drove home afterwards, it's difficult to describe my happiness. I just felt so loved ... so truly LOVED by these small people. What a gift they are to me.

March 6 Jesse's Office

Thursday:  Since my Kaity-Girl is no longer coming over to my house (her decision that I am sad about), I have decided that I will go to her at least 1x per week. Thursday seems to be the best day since she is always with Jesse on Thursday. I usually show up shortly after Kaity comes home from school and just stay for a little while, hoping to continue to be connected with her life. She matters to me!

I didn't get there until 4:00 today because I was working over at my sister's house getting it ready for their move to Georgia. When I showed up, I was SO glad to see Kaity and Jesse too. Jesse has been working on revamping his office, which he actually moved from the dining room to the spare room (long story). I snapped a few pictures of it on my phone:

Jesse uses this "room" as a "studio" and does "live" broadcasting from here on his Youtube channel. He has a very cool computer system that he built himself (if I am not mistaken) and excellent monitors, lighting, camera, etc. He's all set! I enjoy seeing him this happy.

And here is the back of Kaitlynn working on her 12 pages of Math homework. Today's Math is almost a complete mystery to me; however, I am still capable of doing long division AND I did learn my multiplication tables in the 3rd or 4th grade and am pretty accurate with 1-12x tables. I find I use this "ability" almost every day. My very limited understanding of geometry is helpful too--most of my knowledge is quite basic; but I remember loving it in high school because my friend, Doug, was very good at helping me through the "proofs", etc. It helped that I had a major crush on him--but he was a very decent person. Algebra and I never agreed with each other, and I never took Calculus. 

I think Kaity's struggle with Math is more to do with her struggle with reading in general. There is a LOT of reading involved in solving these problems she is doing today--most of them are story problems. She is not a fan of reading; but she has challenges to overcome in reading. I hope she gets the assistance she needs. Reading is so primary to life in general; besides being one of the highest pleasures in this world.

I visited with these two for about 90 minutes, and then went home without my Kaity to eat my little dinner alone. My heart hurts with this loss of Kaity time. Do you see my heart, Lord? Please have Your way with Kaity--give her a thirst for You that no one else can satisfy. There is no one like You, Lord!

February 28 Games, games, games!

Friday:  I looked forward to today all week! When I picked little Cal up today, he was all smiles and so happy to see me! That's good for my grandma-heart, for sure.

We came over here--but on our drive over, Cal told me he wasn't feeling well. I asked him what the matter was, but he couldn't seem to define it: no headache, no stomach ache ... what could it be? As soon as we walked into my house, Cal requested we watch a movie together. I put that off for the time being--because I don't usually resort to electronics or movies until I am exhausted from playing and want to clean up. 

I had set up a bunch of play areas--our usual--with magnets and Playmobile toys and animals, etc. But nothing at all was appealing to our Cal! This is very rare. Usually, I can't even get him to eat lunch because he is playing so happily. Finally, Cal announced that he was hungry, hinting that if he ate a good lunch, THEN we could watch a movie; so I grabbed onto that, and heated up our Mac 'n cheese and made us each a hotdog. Cal requested catsup AND mustard on his "dog" today, so that's what I served him. He did eat pretty well. We did a lot of visiting while we ate. As soon as he finished his lunch he announced that it was movie time. He specifically requested a MINION movie--so that is what I found for him to watch. I'm not big on modern cartoons ... they just seem to be so full of anger and vindication! Even the minions! BUT ... he did have a flushed little face and wasn't really behaving in his natural way, so I put it on for him to watch and he did right up to the finish--all 90 minutes of its nonsense. I tried to watch it with him, but I came in and out of the room while doing various other activities that needed accomplishing.

Here are just a few pictures of little Cal today:

Watching the Minion movie ...

I built this Magnatile car ramp while the movie was playing:

After the movie ended, Cal decided to try the ramp and add on to it as well.

Cal is a very good builder!

I love to watch you build, Cal. God has given you a very mechanical mind, and a lot of creativity.

After we played for about an hour, it was time to drive back to Cal's in time to unlock the door for Brendan coming home from school. This DOOR has been trouble for me from the get go! For weeks and weeks, I could NOT get it to unlock with the key--it would only turn LEFT and that was the wrong way to trip the lock. Dylan showed me that it needs to turn RIGHT and then it will open, which it did for me several weeks in a row--no problem. But last week as well as this week was ... very annoying. LAST week, the locked tripped but the door STILL would not open. I had to use a lot of force with my entire body against the door in order for it to open, and then I went flying inside, nearly breaking my neck, with Cal laughing himself silly watching my body fly around (I think I was also screaming). But today, Cal was soundly sleeping in my car, so I went to the door alone and did my usual. For the first 3 tries, the key would NOT turn to the right at all. Nada! So I took the key out of the lock and prayed. I put it back in, and with a LOT of effort, the key finally engaged the lock and it was clearly UNLOCKED--but do you think the door would open? No way. By the time I had spent 3-4 chilly moments pressing the door and shoving on the door, I finally got pretty angry with it and just pushed with all of my 143 pounds, while groaning, and ... oh my! This time the door FLEW open, I tripped over the entry-way, my body flying about 90 mph and did a complete crash landing full force on my right knee with my ankle twisting underneath my leg. Ouch.

Sigh.

At least I didn't land on my face and knock out any teeth. But OUCH. My entire leg hurts, especially at the back of my knee. Pooh. I had such a good week walking and biking (over at the park recreation building) and I was on my way to building up my physical fitness AS WELL AS doing my hip exercises at home so that I can be in shape when I go down to Florida at the end of April. 

Are you crying yet?

I finally picked myself up off the floor and limped back to the car to get a bunch of stuff that I had planned to do with the bigger kids once they got home from school. Everything turned out okay, except I was sore. I brought over my new checker board:

Aidan and I played ONE game of regular checkers. THEN we played TWO games of fox and geese. I also played a game of fox and geese with Brendan. I was the geese every time and I lost all three games! Those poor geese do not stand a chance with that tricky fox!

Erin looked at all the pretty stones and worked on making a necklace for herself. We ran into a few problems, though, with the string fraying apart and making it tedious to get it to fit through the holes in the little gems. I'm going to have to work on a solution for that before next week.

We had a lot of fun today. Erin and I also played a few games of my fancy new tic-tac-toe game and just visited together about her day at school. Erin is very sociable and vocal--she is six going on thirty sometimes, and she is as cute as a bug. Sometimes a stinker--always cuddly and chummy though. Thankful for these grandchildren.

When Dylan and Kelly returned home, I left soon after. My right knee/leg was aching from my stupid fall and I needed to go home and take care of it. I missed visiting with them today. Hopefully, I can get my leg to settle down with a little bit of rest, elevation and Ibuprofen.

February 27 Stuff

Thursday:  It's been a quiet week around here! I did get to pick Cal up from school Tuesday afternoon and bring him back to his house. It was fun to see this little guy mid-week and laugh with him for awhile.

In the last few weeks, I've been trying to get a few new games to play with these kiddos. They are good at games and they really like to play. I asked a few weeks ago if any of them had ever played a game of checkers; and they hadn't--not one of them! I went online (via Amazon) to look for the PERFECT checker board--but none of them suited me one single bit! Probably because I remembered seeing this one at Cracker Barrel years and years ago and always wanted to purchase it but never did! So after a futile search online, I just got into my car and drove across the city to the Cracker Barrel near 44th Street and bought one! There are quite a few games you can play with this: regular checkers, "give-away", corner checkers, and "fox and geese!" (on the reverse side, there is a special "fox and geese" configuration and rules--I tried it, but their rules give the geese too many geese! The way I always played it was just on the regular checker board with FOUR geese against ONE fox. But anyway, I am excited to teach the kiddos some new games when I see them Friday.

The other day, I finally caught a few close-ups of my friendly squirrel up in my window feeder. I have quite a few different squirrels who visit this feeder throughout the week, and I truly cannot distinguish them apart from each other. Sometimes they come in pairs, and other times, there is just one.

This little guy is quite unafraid of me, so I get very close to the window glass and speak very kind words to him. He stops eating the peanuts to watch me, and every now and then I could SWEAR he is smiling at me! I wish I could pet this little creature.

Oh! And I ordered a new piano bench--this time I was successful on Amazon and ordered this one for a total of $44.95! It arrived today and I opened the box hoping I could figure out how to attach the legs like the directions show; but my technical/mechanical ability goes only as far as changing light bulbs--so I messaged Jesse and asked if I could bring it over to him for him to assemble. Which I did, and HE DID and VOILA'! Look how nice it looks with my piano. My old bench was rather chewed up by dear Belle-Belle and looked quite shabby. Looking at it began to get on my nerves--even though I liked to be reminded of Belle. I was going to drive over to the piano store to see if they sold separate benches, but then I checked Amazon real quick and found this one. It opens up for music storage as well--my other one did not have this feature.

Tomorrow when I see Erin, I'm bringing this little container of pretty beads, string, and everything necessary for her to make herself a sparkly necklace. Erin is a very "girly" girl, and she will love this. I've actually had the beads for a very long time ... but Erin seemed to young to be patient enough to string them, etc. But I think she is ready now.

All of this is rather random ... but like I said, it's been a quiet week around here!

February 21 Joy

Friday:  I picked up young Cal this morning at 11:30 over at his house and we drove over to the Beach House and played for hours! We had such a nice time together. I am super thankful for this one-on-one time I get to have with this small person ... and I've only a few months left to enjoy him this way.

Cal requested we build another layout for our trains today; so we did. Cal is quite a good track builder; but sometimes he needs assistance getting all the tracks to join into one BIG twisty-turnie track. That's where I come in! We played with this layout for quite awhile, trying all of the various trains in different combinations.

I purchased a few more heavy-duty, but small, magnets from Amazon. We played for an hour with these, combining them with our other magnets, and really having a lot of fun.

Cal is quite an intense little builder. The sun was in his eyes, so he requested that I lower my blinds. I was just glad to SEE the sun!

I hardly took any photos today. I'm getting lazy at photographing lately. Maybe it's just that my camera is getting old and a bit worn around the edges. I don't see myself replacing it anytime soon; so I should just continue snapping away with it. Also, I haven't been on one single winter walk yet--mostly because I don't want to break a leg (or hip) somewhere in the middle of nowhere. That would not be good.

We returned to Cal's place around 3:15, and Brendan came off his bus about 5 minutes later. I brought "Boggle" with me and he and I played two games of it. Brendan is very good with words and spelling; but I did win twice. He declared that I was VERY good at words--and I am! I was just glad that Brendan was actually happy to play a game with me. He tries to get me to play Pokemon, but that game is just beyond me! I cannot seem to get the hang of it whatsoever.

When the littles came home at 4:10, we played a bunch of different games I had brought with me. Aidan was excited to show me a website called ABCya, which is an educational site the kids get to use on the main floor computer. It's a very fun site! Super good for learning! Erin and Cal are excited about it too. Yay!

I had such a nice day with the children today. I am so thankful for them. I am also thankful to the Lord for feeling healthier these past weeks, stronger, and more able to be helpful to my family. This is true JOY for me!

February 18 A terrific Tuesday

Tuesday:  Well! Elementary, Middle, and High-schoolers' mid-winter break was over today and all returned to school EXCEPT not preschoolers like Cal! So I was asked to fill-in today, which I did. Kelly dropped Cal off to me at 9am and we played for five out of five-and-a-half hours (30 minutes was taken with Cal watching Dino-Dex while I was picking up toys). 

Here are a few pictures from our day--I set up this paper cup "wall" before Cal arrived. He thought it was pretty cool. I told him that I bet the two of us could "huff and puff and BLOW it down"! if we tried real hard. So we did! And down it came.

We rebuilt several different walls to see how high we could get our cups--could we stack them taller than Cal? 

We could, so we DID! Cal's favorite part (naturally) was the knocking down and crashing of whatever we had built. He is getting closer to being FIVE now, so he has more patience to let me build longer before he begins wrecking everything.

Cal found that he was pretty good at building with cups! "Rocky" (our T-Rex puppet) was pretty intent on destruction; but Cal kept him at bay until he was finished building.

We also played with cars and trucks for quite awhile back in the spare room. Cal gets no end of joy out of cars and trucks--me too! I always preferred playing with Kevin's toys (he and I were 12 months apart) than dolls.

Cal set up quite a truck carrier thing-a-ma-jiggie and was quite proud of it.

We also did quite a bit of reading today, which is always enjoyable with Cal. He really gets into a good story--follows closely, laughs, anticipates the next event, etc. I love reading to him. We read "Limu, The Blue Turtle" (by Kimo Armitage), and "Elephant Joe, Brave Knight" (by David Wojtowycz) today.

We also built a very nice train layout in the room closest to my outside bird feeders. We kept a close eye on the bird activity outside while we played trains.

Can you believe I am STILL playing with trains after 22+ years? Little Cal and I found a lot of joy today zooming the trains around and blowing our train whistle.

We also got our Play Doh out and spent 30 minutes having fun with it. Cal immediately designed an "Orange Monster" and commanded that I build a purple monster so that our monsters could fight. Mr. Cal created his monster all by himself.

Cal said the HORN on his monster was modeled after the dinosaurs, and it was his main weapon of defense.

I made a purple two-headed happy monster who wasn't at all interested in fighting. Cal drove the horn of his monster right through 2-Heads heart and "made him dead." 

Cal really wanted me to build a few more monsters, so I did. I built an orange monster, as well as a hot pink monster (not pictured). Neither of them could defeat Mr. Cal's orange horned-monster.

I took Cal back to his house, arriving at 3:00. Two neighbor girls were set to take care of Cal from that time until they would no longer be needed, so I came back to my house. It sure was a fun day to have Cal over. He's quite easy to entertain. He didn't eat much of anything today, which always troubles me--but usually, he is a very good eater; so I decided not to worry about it. He was just too busy to bother with food today! He did eat a half sandwich (peanut-butter and jelly), and had a few chips. He also drank several glasses of chocolate milk.