April 7 A very FULL day

Tuesday:  It's Spring break here in W. Michigan, which means most, if not all, public schools are shut down until Monday the 14th. Since today is Tuesday, I had the four Pahman-O'Brien's at my house for most of the day. 

Since I do not do well with cooking with others in my small kitchen, I did the French toast up and put it in a crock pot yesterday to be re-heated today. I already had chicken/broccoli/fettuccini in the refrigerator from the other day--I know Brendan loves this pasta concoction. AND the other kids I knew would readily eat hotdogs (which are super quick), other than Aidan (who does not eat hotdogs)--and I grilled a cheese sandwich for him, which he kind of ate. I had cut up a cantaloupe the day before, put it in containers in the refrigerator and totally forgot to serve to the kids. Yikes. I'm not really a fan of cantaloupe, but I suppose I will have to force myself to eat it rather than waste it.

I picked these four kiddos up at 8:30 in the morning and didn't return them until almost 5:30. The majority of the time, we played at my house; but on the way back to their house, we stopped for an hour at Dwight Lydell Park. It was a good day!

Erin is just about the only "grand" who plays with my dolls anymore. Kaity ALWAYS enjoyed playing with dolls around here; but now they are hardly played with. Erin especially loves "baby James" as well as "baby Bonnie (not pictured). I love how she plays so sweetly with them.

I set up the foosball table the night before to be all ready to play a tournament with Gregory--I'm trying very hard to refer to him by this name now--but it's SO hard, since he has been more commonly called Cal  (Callaghan is his middle name). This child LOVES this game and he is an absolute riot when he plays. We played THREE games because we had each won ONE, so we had to have a "match" game. I forget who won! All of the games were very close!

We also made an attempt to learn how to play: "TAP A BELL'O" which would be a LOT easier to learn to play if I would just force myself to actually read through all of the rules--but since I haven't done that yet, it's always a rather haphazard affair to play the game. The kiddos just like ringing the bell--it does make a nice, clear sound.

As usual, all of the kids (except Cal) drew, colored, made "books", used stencils and stamp pads, etc. They are a very creative little crew.

I also introduced "Worst Case Scenario" to them (but I retained all of the gruesome scenario cards and didn't even show them to the kids) and we played about 4 rounds. Some examples of "bad" things to choose from were: "You are stuck in an elevator", "You can only eat one thing for the rest of your life", "You grow a tail that is permanent", "You jump from an airplane, pull your parachute, but it doesn't open (which would naturally result in your death--but at least the kids weren't grossed out about it), etc. All five of us played it together--I helped Cal because he is not a reader yet. I love that these kiddos enjoy playing games together. It's so interesting to observe each of their personalities as they play. Beautiful kiddos.

The spare room was strewn from wall to wall with toy cars, roads, dolls, LEGOs, etc.

Here is Aidan constructing a racetrack--notice how he is utilizing plastic cups to give some leverage to the track--he is a very creative builder with almost anything he is given to build with.

Brendan enjoys sketching very much--at least I hope that's why he was sitting here drawing for the longest time. He is 14 now and although he never NEVER ever complains, I sometimes wonder if wishes he were a million other places instead of here with his younger siblings.

Cal made an apartment complex with the MagnaTiles, requesting little lights for each room. He was very pleased with the result.

Here is Aidan, once again constructing ANOTHER racetrack, combined with MagnaTiles.

The Treehouse is still a favorite around here. This actually belongs to Kaity, but years ago when I got it for her birthday, we decided to leave it here so that the pieces would not get lost over at her house. These kids feel the same way--they realize the small parts would get "lost in the sauce" over at their place, but they are very happy to play with it at my house.

By about 3:30 or so, there were so many toys, games, cars, stuffed animals, puppets, paper airplanes, etc. OUT at the same time, it was quite ... crowded around here! I was starting to get claustrophobic (!!) so I loaded the kiddos up and we drove over to Dwight Lydell Park. We took our box of pre-made paper airplanes along to fly in the field there--but it was just too windy to really get good trial flights. But there was plenty to do on the playground and we actually played there for over an hour. It was a beautiful day for outside play other than being 42 degrees--these guys are almost NEVER cold, so they were just fine.

The reason Erin is in her PJ's, is because she wasn't feeling well this morning when I picked the kids up and she wanted to stay in something cuddly while at my house. She wasn't one bit hesitant about playing outside in her pajamas, so ... if it didn't bother her, it didn't bother me either.

I'm super glad about the nice day we had. I am also still exhausted 24 hours later! It took about an hour to put everything away at my house (because I am fussy about where things go!), and I had dishes to wash and dinner to make, but I went to bed at about 9pm and slept soundly all night. Thank you, Lord, for letting me be grandma to such interesting and loving grandchildren.