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.