June 2 More time with the kiddos

Tuesday:  The kiddos had a half day of school today (and just two more half days of school left for the entire school year!), so I picked them all up at noon-ish and brought them to my house to eat lunch and hang out for the afternoon.

These four beautiful grandchildren! The picture below is a picture I snapped on my phone of a picture that is soon to hang in their house--taken by a very dear photographer friend of the family. Look at them!

Brendan turned 14 in February. Aidan is 9 as of mid-March. Erin will be 8 in the next little while. Gregory had his sixth birthday in May! They are quite a group: active, happy, creative, funny, loud (!!), and a little bit goofy sometimes. I love them dearly. They have such interesting personalities.

I decided to try playing the game of LIFE with all four of them in the afternoon.

Note to self: NEVER play LIFE with four children this age all together! It's too much! We cracked up a lot while playing it, but I was super exhausted by the time the game had ended. Little Gregory and I were partners (since he is not yet a reader).

Isn't this a great picture of Erin? I could eat her up sometimes, she is so precious.

One problem with the game is that it takes too long to take a turn, because a bunch of stuff happens during each person's turn. So Gregory got extra fidgety, and Aidan lost patience with the whole thing after we'd been playing for a solid HOUR. I don't blame him! He did end up winning the game. I think he will enjoy it much better with only two players. I've never truly liked the whole premise of the game ... money, money, money ... you know, that whole mindset. I will say, however, that this updated version of the game does facilitate a lot of fun interaction with the players that has nothing whatsoever to do with money. Erin was thrilled with the fact that each married couple could have "babies". She announced that she wanted A LOT OF BABIES! She ended up with triplet girls and was so pleased. I think Brendan ended up with FOUR pets (he was so happy about this) and three children.

We also enjoyed some waffle ice cream cones with mint-chocolate chip ice cream. YUM.

Near the end of our afternoon we drove over to Dwight Lydell Park to play for awhile. We brought a bunch of paper airplanes with us to fly around--but the wind wreaked havoc with them!

However, we did meet a very nice "grandma" whose name was Mary. She was at the park with her grandson, Sawyer. They flew airplanes with us for awhile too and Sawyer took his favorite one home with him. It was nice meeting these kind folk at the park.

I delivered the kiddos back to their house at 6:00 sharp. Ella was walking down the street as we drove up. She was all set to take over the care of these guys until Kelly returned home from her evening responsibilities. 

It was a good day! I was super tired, but the good kind of tired--you know, when you've done all you can do and most of it turned out just fine! Thankful. So thankful.