August 1 Brendan's sleepover

Friday:  The unbearable heat finally subsided this week to where I could envision having grandchildren spend time here with me at my little house. I invited Brendan for an overnight tonight and he accepted! When I picked him up this afternoon, I told him we had three choices for activities: (1) AJ's  (2) Altitude  (3) Deer Tracks Junction. Brendan picked ALTITUDE without any hesitation whatsoever--so that is our activity for tonight.

I hadn't been inside Altitude in many months! I used to take Kaity there at LEAST 1x per week for about two years running ... and then ... Kaity stopped coming over; so I don't take her to Altitude anymore. When I walked inside, I was surprised at some of the changes!

There was not a lot of action going on here at the time we showed up--about 3:30 in the afternoon. This is probably due to the fact that it was a perfectly gorgeous OUTSIDE day and who would want to be INSIDE? However, it's been probably two years since Brendan has been able to jump here; so, I figured this was a good choice. He seemed to enjoy bouncing around for the 90 minutes we were there.

So this "stairway to nowhere" is a new item. You climb the stairs and leap off into this very comfortably soft oversized pillow for your landing ...

And here he goes ...

I caught him mid-air (although very blurred) ...

Brendan also enjoyed the trapeze -- which isn't new, but it's very fun.

We played a few games of ice hockey as well. Brendan knocked me out of the park. What a fun game! Also, there are no longer any "foam cubes" in the jousting area--just another oversized pillow on which to fall. 

We were super hungry when we left Altitude and zoomed home to eat a chicken fettuccine casserole I made ahead of time. Thankfully, Brendan likes it. I had other snacks too, and freshly cut watermelon. Brendan played a few simple video games on my computer--they are freebees, and very basic--but Brendan loves technology and was happy to make use of it while I did some kitchen clean-up. 

We also did a little bit of art--something called graft paper 3-D art. I knew Brendan would be good at it, and I was right. I neglected to take any pictures of what he drew, but he seemed to enjoy it very much.

We ended our night watching "Home Alone 3" which I had never seen and about which I had made some inaccurate assumptions. We enjoyed laughing together ... and by then, it was 10:30--30 minutes passed my usual bedtime. Brendan decided to stay awake a little longer and work on a "novel" that he had in his head. I completely didn't have a single page of lined notebook paper for him to use, so he wrote on some graft paper he had been using for the 3-D art. I asked him to describe his story to me from his head--and it was quite intricate and interesting. !! 

We have plans for tomorrow as well ...