July 10 Gregory's sleepover

Friday evening and Saturday morning: We arrived here at my house for Cal's sleepover by about 4pm Friday afternoon. I had laid out a few of the toys that we hardly play with anymore to see if I could "trigger" Cal's good memories of them and perhaps he would play with them again. It worked!

We worked on a train layout for quite a long time. This picture only shows about half of our finished track. We were a bit distracted by all of the birds outside my side window and kept looking out trying to identify the name of each bird. Cal is quite passionate about this. He says that he and his dad take walks around their neighborhood and use Dylan's phone app that can identify birds by the sounds they make (I have this app too). I love knowing that Cal and Dylan do this. Cal says Erin enjoys it as well. Both Erin and Cal are very good at imitating bird calls. I remember a time when Brendan was very young (perhaps 3) when he and I were at the beach and he called out to the seagulls like he was an ACTUAL seagull himself and they all came to him! He thought that was pretty great.

I keep a small bowl on my front porch to place peanuts there for the squirrels to enjoy. We had a long talk with one of my squirrels this morning (but, naturally, I missed that photographing that).

We began a foosball "tournament" and Cal put his heart and soul into each game. He's a pretty fierce player!

Of course, Cal has all kinds of ways he uses to count what each field goal is worth (point-wise). I have to attempt to at least clamp down on his outrageous rules so that he gets used to playing the REAL game. But it's hilarious to see what he will come up with to score TWO points instead of just ONE.

I promised Cal I would make him tacos for dinner. He was super pleased. This kid can really put away a LOT of food, and he is not a fussy eater at all. Emma and Chris were similar to this at this age as well. Matt was a little more particular about what he would eat, but it wasn't a problem. Brendan and Erin eat a lot of variety as well. As far as Aidan is concerned, I'm just glad he loves my homemade French toast and corn on the cob!

Later on in the evening, Cal requested that we play the game of "LIFE". In the picture below, one of his ACTION cards told him to pick an opponent (there was only me to choose from) and have a dance contest to see WHO was the best ... Cal won without any difficulty whatsoever, and the bank awarded him 30K for his super interesting dance "moves."

Cal's occupation was an ATHLETE, so he pretended he was a pro football player (of course). My occupation was a fashion designer. Cal ended up with twice the amount of $$ that I did! He also had THREE puppies and THREE children--we had to load an extra car for him to move around. He decided that one of his babies could be the driver. His pet puppy was driving the primary car (with the parents in the back seat).

After we played LIFE, we had a small root beer float (YUM), and got ready to watch our movie. We didn't start watching the movie until some time after 8:00. I was trying to be sure to wear Cal down before putting him in bed so that perhaps it wouldn't be too long or painful a process. We decided to watch: "LEGO, Batman". Yuck. I would so much rather watch a cute little story! Sigh. Cal went to bed and was soundly sleeping by about 9:20. Yes!

However, at promptly 6am, he was up and about. He was super quiet, cuddled himself up on the couch with my very soft blanket and waited for me to crawl out of bed. He never once disturbed me, so I laid in bed an extra 20 minutes!

After breakfast, Cal challenged me to a game of CHESS. I did end up checkmating our poor dear, but he handled like a little man.

Before we knew it, it was 9:30 and time to leave for Deer Tracks!