May 1 and 2 Gregory's sleepover

Friday:  I picked Cal (Gregory) up right after school today and brought him over to my house for his much-awaited sleepover. I've calculated, and if things go smoothly (!!) I can invited one child every other Friday for a sleepover--which would give each of the four kiddos SIX sleepovers per year. So ... that's my goal. However, schedules do get in the way some times, so this is tentative planning at best. 

Cal loves my portable foosball table. He calls it SOCCER, and I guess that's okay. The balls look exactly like soccer balls. I won the first game by one point--Friday night. But then Saturday, we played and Cal creamed me.

Cal has his own unique way of scoring points, so you have to be aware of some of those "odd" calls he makes. But overall, he is growing in his sportsmanship and doesn't mind losing now and then (as long as it isn't too often).

Cal also enjoys my "Battle Box" game. I purchased it at the Grand Haven toy store. We've had a lot of fun with it, but there are things I would change about its design if I could. Cal likes it just like it is. He's a very tenacious little person who does not "give up" on anything.

When it was "movie time" Friday night, we had a difficult time choosing a movie to watch. Plus, my VCR is kind of "iffy". We finally gave up on movies that I had here at my house and went on Prime to see if there was anything acceptable to watch. Cal chose "The Minecraft Movie" which he told me he "loves", but about 25 minutes into it, it was just too much for me! I told Cal it was scaring me to pieces! So we switched and watched some Minion "shorts" and then we just watched "Tom and Jerry" for awhile and Cal ate two huge bowls of popcorn.

Getting Cal to bed was a little bit tricky--I think it's because he fell asleep in my car on the ride over to my house -- and so he "recharged" and wasn't tired enough to go to sleep very early. I finally put on some pretty music and he fell asleep at about 10:30.

Not one to sleep IN, Cal was awake and ready to play basketball at 6:30 AM. I didn't take any pictures of us shooting basketballs, but Cal is convinced that he had more points than I did. 

We played a LOT with my puppets. Cal even brought a puppet from his house!

We built some race tracks too, and had quite a few exciting races.

Here is the kitty puppet Cal brought over. His name is "Windy" and he is a cousin to my "Cocoa Cat!" Windy is a little bit chunkier than Cocoa and his mouth opens easier too. We played and played with these puppets.

CAL!!! You are the cutest little person!

We also played three Chess games (which Cal pronounces "CHEST" with a very distinct "T"). I clobbered him on the first game, but he was sharper Saturday morning and actually Check-mated me!!!!

Look at his excitement when he won the game! He kills me!

I told him he was too smart for his old grandma!

Cal wanted to learn how to play CHINESE CHECKERS, so we played a game. It's not an easy concept actually. I don't think kids play this game too much since there are more fun games out there; but this is still a good game to teach strategy. Look at Cal sizing up the board ...

We also got out the PlayDoh to make "monsters" out of. I'm not big on monsters, but I was so tired this morning that I just followed whatever Cal wanted us to do. My PlayDoh is old and not very soft ... so I decided that we didn't need to be hyper about mixing the colors. Cal made snake monsters, "water" monsters, and I forget what else! We had very intense battles. The one whose monster got the most squashed was the loser.

Cal's birthday is 13 days from now and I haven't any clue what to get him. So I suggested that we drive out to Aunt Candy's Toy Company (Rockford) and have a look around at their toys to see if Cal could give me some ideas (see next Post).

This is Cal eating his mint chocolate chip ice-cream at Culver's after we finished our shopping.

I enjoyed having you over, little Mister. You are a delightful person. I'm going to enjoy spending time with you as the years progress ... what a blessed grandma I am.