May 4 Fun pictures of these kiddos

Tuesday: Tuesdays are pretty high energy days around here, so I try to prepare the house and a few extra activities we can do in advance. I do have a LOT of toys, and thankfully these are toys that are good for building and pretending and playing with week after week. I am super thankful for toys! Aidan never fails to work on a train layout every week ...

Erin wanders around each room of my house gathering little odds and ends that she plays with, drops ... and then goes on to the next thing! She really enjoys all of my puppets, especially the finger puppets.

I love this picture SO MUCH of Brendan. Look! He is looking me right in the eye, like he used to do when he was a little boy. He did very well at my house today and even interacted more with Aidan and Erin. I was super happy for him.

Erin loves "Sweetie" the shark, as well as my "noculars" ...

I might have to get her a pair of binoculars for her birthday (in June).

"Curly-Top" working on his building projects ... he had something going in each room of my house.

Erin and I played a few games of MEMORY. She did really well with this game!

"Where is the match, Gwamma? Oops! No match!"

There are times (still) when I could absolutely eat this child up ...

Mr. Aidan was into more of his funny faces today ... poor kiddo ... he is probably so sick to death of me snapping pictures of him.

We spent some fun time with Play-Doh this afternoon. Everyone seemed to have enough Play-Doh toys to keep them busy for awhile.

We played a very fun game called: "Riddle Moo This!" [Learning Resource] that I checked out from our library. Each child has a buzzer with an animal sound (mooooo, cock-a-doodle-doo!, neighhhhhh, woof woof!) and then there are little cards with three clues to a riddle and the answer. I read the cards to these three hilarious children ...

Aidan and Erin just hit their buzzers without stopping, no matter what clue we were on. If I would point to Erin and ask her the answer, she would (without fail) reply: "COW!" and then Brendan and I would absolutely crack up.

Look at her facial expressions ... isn't she something?

The riddles were too difficult for Erin and Aidan--although they DID like hearing the answers--but the riddles were too easy for Brendan--but he managed to really enjoy playing the game.

I loved this time spent with the children today. Thank you, Lord, for giving me the strength and Your grace to enjoy these dear kiddos today. 

May 2 A brief jaunt at Kruse Park

Sunday afternoon:  As we pulled into the parking lot at Kruse Park, Emma announced that she would stay IN the car while I took a few pictures. This was completely agreeable--particularly because it was cold enough that I knew I wouldn't take very long ...

Kruse Park is a dog-friendly beach with lots of rules for your animals (as far as keeping the beach clean), but still a very welcoming beach for dogs and their owners. So dogs to show up in a few of these pictures.

It's a very lovely spot. Pere Marquette Beach is within sight--it's to the north about 1-2 miles.

I walked further to the south than I ever have--mostly because bugs are not quite awake yet--and also, because the dune grass isn't very high yet and I could actually SEE a pathway and followed it for a little bit. What a beautiful afternoon! I love Lake Michigan so much.
 

May 2 Pere Marquette with Emma

Sunday:  Emma spent Saturday night with me ... but perhaps because I was too boring (!!), she fell asleep very early on the couch--before we had even gotten into our pj's or anything. I read a book for awhile as she slept and finally concluded that it would be best for us to just get ready and go to bed for the night. We did exactly that and got a lot of needed rest.

Sunday morning's service at Calvary was SO GOOD. We have begun a summer series into Paul's letter to the Philippians and will be studying it for the next fifteen weeks. Pastor Tom taught the best sermon I have ever heard him teach. Emma tracked with the message the entire time, taking notes too. The series is titled: The FIGHT for JOY. I'm really looking forward to it so much. 

After we got home and ate lunch, we decided we would drive over to the lake for our afternoon walk. However, I had completely underestimated how STRONG THE WIND was, as well as the drop in temperature by the lake--although typically it is about 10 degrees cooler there--today it was nearly 20 degrees colder ... and combined with the wind--well, we were COLD.

Lake Michigan was so beautiful I could hardly contain myself. Emma waded into the water a little bit and was nearly knocked off her feet by the wind surfer ... Emma and I both agreed that it would be very cool to learn how to do that--obviously I CANNOT due to being an old lady.

Isn't it completely beautiful?

Emma's hair was whipping around and getting knotted and tangled ... so she was not exactly pleased. I am too old to care about my hair! 

Look at the sun sparkling off the waves ...

The farther we walked along the breakwater, the more we were getting splashed by incoming waves ... I didn't even realize mty camera lens got a soaking until a few ruined pictures later ...

I love this place!

It was so kind of the Lord to give us this brief time today to enjoy His handiwork, soak in the sun, laugh together, and just breathe in the seaside ...

I tried to talk Emma into sitting down in the sand for awhile and staying longer, but she was not going to have it ... however, I had already made up my mind to drive the 10 minutes south of here and explore Kruse Park briefly (see next post).
 

May 1 These Girls!

Saturday:  When I came by today at 3:00 to pick up Kaity, Harper (her next-door neighbor) was over playing. Harper will be six pretty soon. She and her sister, Kenzie (almost 10) are Kaity's two best friends. They are very dear little girls! Having said that, they are also a force to be reckoned with--when they are together, that is. It seems that one at a time, they play quite well together with Kaity. But when BOTH are present, all kinds of ... more negative interactions occur.

As soon as I walked into Jesse's house, I encountered Harper and Kaity. Harper asked WHY I was there! I told her I was here to pick up Kaity and bring her over to my house to play. Immediately, Harper asked if she could come too. Sigh. It's not that I do not like extra children (exactly), it's just that I had not pre-planned enough food, activities, etc. for another child, plus I was kind of looking forward to having just Kaity over for four hours together--you see, Thursdays are Kaity's swim lessons and so our time together is always cut short because of that. Saturdays we get to enjoy a longer time together. 

I was able to finally get Kaity to where I could whisper and ask her if she WANTED Harper to come over and Kaity gave a definite YES answer. Long story shortened a great deal ... once Harper went next door to ask her mom's permission, Kenzie (who was doing homework in her room) also wanted to come. Sigh (again). Harper and Kenzie TOGETHER? They do not agree about a single thing! One of them is always unhappy because the other one is getting more attention, or we are not doing what they want at that exact moment in time!

Kaity forgets this in between times and just wants to share some happiness with her friends--and I totally understand that! But look at Kaity's face (below). We have been at my house a total of TEN minutes and already Kaity KNOWS this is not going well. Kaity is being bossed around by both Harper and Kenzie. Harper is whining that the other girls are "moving her stuff around" and Kenzie is chasing Matey-Bird all over the house.

At this point, there was really nothing to be done about it other than to try to placate all three girls and see if we could find some happy moments together.

I'm not sure I caught a single smile from Kaity the three hours we were at my house today. We did have about 20 minutes of fun playing a game I had checked out from the library. It's a little Quiz game with cool animal-sound answer buttons to push, etc. Kenzie kept winning all of the cards, much to Harper's very vocal dismay, and Kaity was pretty pouty about not winning as many cards as Kenzie. I had gotten out my new shark puppet, Sweetie, and introduced him to the girls prior to our game. Sweetie would bare his teeth at anyone who was being whiny and then the girls would laugh about it.

I did put on some children's music in the background (from I-tunes on my computer). I have a lot of fun children's songs, as well as mostly Christian kids' songs. They all recognized one they sing at Awana: "My God is SO Big, So Strong and SO Mighty!" Here is Harper doing the motions to the song.

Kenzie really enjoys little Matey-Bird--and Matey was very enamored with Kenzie too. He loved kissing her earrings and he landed quite often on her shoulders. Kenzie was very pleased about that.

I did cook up some hotdogs for the girls and got out fresh fruit and some chips and other fun stuff to eat. We all did okay with sharing our meal together. A lot of food was wasted, but there was nothing to be done about that! 

Soon it was time to take them back home. I will admit that I was relieved the three hours had passed without a major meltdown from any one of the three ... all of them are used to having things THEIR WAY as well as being quite allergic to the word, "No." But God doesn't shrink back from loving all of us whose hearts are bent completely in that same direction, does He? He seeks us--actually chases after us--welcomes us into His family, shares everything He has with us, and forgives our every single sin. My heart needs to be WAY MORE like His heart ... please Lord.