Public Museum and Grand Coney

January 11:  Thursday. I renewed my GR Public Museum grandparent membership a few weeks ago, so Brendan and I took a little excursion downtown late Thursday afternoon. The museum closes at 5pm, so we only had an hour to enjoy it ... and we did!

We really enjoyed the LEGO display of Grand Rapids in earlier times. It was beautifully built. Brendan was super impressed, and he loved the working trolly-car.

The display was all roped off, so you could only get SO close to it ... but Brendan did well with it. We walked all around it for quite awhile and looked at all of the interesting stuff. 

 The museum was still decorated for Christmas and it looked so beautiful.

 The museum is quite the venue for fancy dinners ... nice view of the preparations going on following closing time I'm assuming ...

We took in the mythical creatures exhibit. Brendan's favorite part was designing his own fire-breathing many-headed dragon and then watching it annimated on the big screen above. 

 Brendan also sketched a mythical creature of his own ...

 There was a very cool puppet theatre where Brendan put on a very brief show ...

We ended our visit over at the carousel (naturally) ... We rode it 2x because ... we wanted to! 

 We ate dinner at the Grand Coney (see pictures at the bottom) ... I posted the pictures out of order. These next few are Brendan's Christmas gift from his god-parents. This little castle set is made of wood. It has a draw-bridge and a towers and little soldier-guys and even a king!

 It also comes with its very own DRAGON. I think Brendan named him "Snerkel". Sometimes Snerkel is super nice to people--but other days, he breathes fire on EVERYONE (this is according to Brendan).

 Here are the pictures of The Grand Coney. It's nice that it is so close to where Brendan lives! In the nicer weather, we can just take a little stroll right from Brendan's house! 

 Brendan ordered mini-corn dogs, and I ordered a cheese-burger smothered in crispy sauteed onions. YUM! First hamburger I have had in a very long time. It was really good.

The most memorable part of this evening, however, came when I found out the really really GOOD news ... but since it has not been officially announced yet, I will keep my lips sealed. But I will say, I have floated on a blissful grandma bubble ever since ... 

Balloons, balloons, balloons!

These beautiful boys ...

January 4:  We are back to our pre-holiday schedule now--so I drove out to Brendan's swim lesson and played with Aidan while Brendan was swimming.

 I was greeted with many smiles from my favorite baby boy ...

 Aidan is very "stuck" on this scrunchy-face pose ... he is adorable, and I love him so much.

 Aidan got himself UNDER these fun tables but had a little bit of difficulty getting himself OUT. Kelly helped him by moving the tables a bit and then he was free ...

 ... and gave me his scrunchiest face because he was so pleased.

 We took a few "selfies" over by the hair dryers ... and walked around chatting at ourselves in each and every mirror. But then Brendan's lesson came to a close and then it was time to have some hang-out time with my little man.

It has been bitter cold this past few days. SO cold, I am dressed in layers at all times. But even with layers, I am having a difficult time tolerating the temperature. Not so with Brendan. He has THE warmest little body ever. 

 We went to Schuler's and played with all of their toys for absolutely NO CHARGE whatsoever.

 Brendan loves these trains so much. So we spent our time with all kinds of imaginings about run-away trains, etc.

Afterwards, we ate our dinner. I asked Brendan where he wanted to eat. He answered with Coney-Dog but I did not know where a Coney-Dog was! I'll have to find out this week. We ate at McDonald's instead (the one closest to Schuler's). Note to self: DO NOT EAT there ever again. Yuck. This is the second time in a few weeks we have eaten at this location and it's not only NOT clean, the service is quite possibly the slowest in the city. We're supposed to have a brief "warm up" next week. Yes! I certainly hope so.

A few more altered winter pictures ...

New Year's day 2018

Brendan slept all night in the tent in the playroom. He slept in until 7:45! Good job, Brendan! We played for a little while before breakfast ... Brendan thought he would give baby Jesus, Mary and Rudolph a ride on the carrier truck. He was pretty intense about it.

 We ate breakfast and then I thought I'd surprise Brendan with some fun art books, starting with "The Thumbprint Book" (Ed Emberley). It is one of my favorite-ever drawing books. Brendan thought it was VERY fun to get his fingers all inked up and then make animals and objects out of the prints.

 I was impressed with how his blue caterpillar turned out. In the first picture, Brendan is talking all about caterpillars to me, how they start out as a chrysalis and how they are formed, etc.

He finally sketched a little chrysalis next to the butterfly ... 

We played more with our Hot Wheels tracks, read some stories--oh--and while I was taking a shower, I put on "The Polar Express" so that I could shower with relative peace. :)  Brendan took a very long bubble bath too with all of the boats as well as Nacho, Sneaker and Pepper mice. 

It was a pretty low-key few hours. I dropped Brendan off at about 1:30 at his house and then went to my mom's where we played a game of Scrabble and then went to Barnes & Nobles for a little while. I'm glad I stopped by her place. We had a nice time together!