December 22 The Pageant at Holy Trinity

Sunday:  Ever since Brendan was a wee boy and made his first appearance in the Christmas Pageant at Holy Trinity, I have looked forward to seeing and enjoying it every year. I took a bunch of pictures of the children (duh!).

This year, Cal was agreeable to participating in the Pageant. Last year, he was not going to have anything to do with it whatsoever!!!! And Aidan was much more agreeable this year too! Last year, he refused to wear the head-gear and announced he was a COW without having to dress up like one. Okay then!

Erin had expressed ANXIETY over this year's pageant to me while I was with her on Friday. She was worried, that since she is now a First Grader, that she would be made to be an ANIMAL in the pageant. I asked her why that would be so terrible and she responded: "Cuz the costume will mess up my hair!" Oh! Erin then told me that she REALLY wanted to be an angel again. Cal told me he would much rather be an ANIMAL. Well ... this is how it all played out yesterday.

It's difficult to see Cal and Erin in the picture below amongst all of the other angels ...

Here--this is better! Look at Cal's angelic little face!

Of the animals on stage, Aidan is the "cow" on the right ...

There he is! Actually wearing the costume! Good job, Aidan.

Brendan told me on Friday that in year's past, the middle school kids were not part of the costumed stage but were used for the readings; but this year, it turned out the middle school kids were needed for shepherds!

Brendan is the handsomest and dearest shepherd of them all.

The Christmas story is read as the children listen ...

The children all sang a beautiful song about His coming to earth ...

Everyone did an excellent job. The littlest kids were super cute. At the bottom of the picture (below) was the smallest of donkeys (wearing the grey hood) who was SO stinkin' cute through the whole thing ...

The children sang more than one song with their beautiful voices.

Our Erin really loves music. She comes by this naturally!

Cal's angel wings were starting to bother him ...

Cal! You look a bit grumpy in this picture. A very serious angel indeed.

Dear Erin ...

Aidan even let me take a few pictures of him dressed up in his costume!

I love these pictures of you, Aidan Paul!

Here is our happy angel boy!

He is something else altogether, isn't he?

Afterwards, there were snacks in the fellowship hall. The children now have their own special snack tables with coloring sheets to supplement their food. So nice.

Erin was so into coloring her picture that she didn't need a single snack!

Dylan and Brendan enjoying some refreshment. I didn't get a single picture of Kelly, unfortunately.

Another Christmas Pageant for the books (or blog) ... so thankful for this family!

December 21 with KT

Saturday:  On the way to my house, Kaity and I stopped at the Grand Rapids Popcorn Company to see if I could find a little "treat" to attach to the Christmas card I was giving to my neighbors. It's been awhile since I've been inside this little store--what a delightful place; and more than that--what delightful people! And the delicious smells! I was able to find the perfect little something to give with my cards! We even got treated to a free bag of popcorn and a slushy!

We didn't do much once we got to my place. I made us our "usual" to eat, and we chatted awhile and shared some videos we had saved to show each other. We were very low-key. I think I was still tired out from Friday--even though I dropped into bed and promptly fell asleep at 8:45 pm!

We did stop by Altitude, but only for about 30 minutes. None of Kaity's usual friends were able to meet her there. We learned that Ayden's dad is down with COVID--so Ayden is kind of keeping away from people because of that. Jace couldn't come, and we didn't really recognize many of the kids who were jumping.

I didn't even take ONE picture (so I've inserted one of Kaity from a few weeks ago). It was good to be with Kaity, though; she is a very dear granddaughter.

December 20 This foursome

Friday:  We had such a nice time together today! These four kiddos are truly loved by their grandma. They are delightful little people, and I am so thankful for them.

Aidan had never played my Battle Box game. He found it very amusing!

It's difficult to see him in the picture (below), but he is cracking up (see him in the bottom right corner?).

I don't think I won a single game of Battle Box with any of the children today! They were very good at it!

Little Cal was trying VERY hard to disrupt our games by placing his little fingers on the board to block our shots ...

Aidan is an intense little person. He took this game VERY seriously. But yet ... he still had fun, and he was willing to do some outrageous moves if it made me laugh.

The kids built with magnets for quite awhile too. Here is Erin showing me her pretty flower ...

Isn't Erin's dress so sweet? I love it!

Naturally, we HAD to have ice cream mid-way through our afternoon.

We watched a few "short" videos I had saved to share with them from Twitter. This is one of my favorite things to do with these guys--because they are patient enough to see a 60 second video through until it gets to the funny part and then we all laugh like crazy.

We drove back to their house by about 4:15 and played for a little bit more until Dylan and Kelly returned home. I don't think I actually sat down in a chair for about five hours today, so I was completely tired when I got home. I went to bed at 8:45 and fell asleep until about 6:20 the next morning. I must have needed the rest, so I didn't feel "guilty" about sleeping TEN solid hours.

December 19 We decorate more cookies

Thursday:  I made up another batch of that shiny icing for Kaity and I to do a little more decorating today. Here are a few pictures:

I think we've gained a bit of skill over the last week when we were doing this! I will admit that some of the cookies LOOK a little bit ... crazy ... but we surely had fun decorating. We'll keep trying this during the different seasons--i.e. Valentine's and Easter ... maybe we'll get really GOOD at this!

I have NO idea what this face from Kaity is about! Yikes! I must have said something that annoyed her!

I'm so glad I can put these fun days in my memory bank and look back on them with JOY.

December 14 Cookies with Kaity

Saturday:  Kaity and I made plans today to decorate sugar cookies. I baked the cookies Thursday morning. The first batch got a little bit too done (not by much, though). Afterwards, I reduced the time by a few minutes and those ones turned out much better. 

I had been looking at videos that instructed folk on how to make that cool frosting that dries shiny and smooth and hard--it's very good for decorating cookies. I have never worked with this kind of frosting before, so I knew it would be a learning experience for me.

Well ... Saturday morning I finished up with the baking. After reading up on the frosting recipe, I decided to wait until Kaity was here with me before I made it. We would start with a big batch of white frosting and then divide it up between smaller bowls for the coloring.

It took a lot longer than I thought it would ... AND getting the consistency of the frosting correct so that it would actually flow out of the nozzles and bottles we had--that was really tricky. But for our very first try, I don't think we did badly at all!

Kaity and I cracked up a LOT while we were prepping the frosting bottles, mixing the colors, and trying our best to have it actually work. We found it was a very fine line between having the frosting REFUSE to flow out of the nozzles to the frosting RUNNING out of the nozzles. We had a few messes to clean up!

Kaity enjoyed herself hugely ... look at her!

I will hold these sweet moments in my memory bank for a very long time ...

I love you, Kaity!

After we decorated for two hours, we decided to call it a night and relax awhile. We watched "Home Alone" (a movie Kaity knows most every word of), and laughed our heads off. We've seen this movie probably every Christmas for years and years ... and it's STILL funny.

What a nice time it was with you tonight, Kaity!

December 13 Misadventure!!!

Friday:  So ... as I was saying in the prior post--the plan was for Cal and I to arrive a little after 3:00 to meet Brendan coming off his bus. I have a key to their house, so the plan was for us to go in and be together while waiting for Erin and Aidan to come home from school a little after 4:00.

Cal didn't fall asleep today in the car like he usually does--probably because we are one hour earlier than usual. I kept the car running (because of the cold temps) and ran up to their front door with my key to their house to open it up and get Cal and I settled while waiting for the kids.

BUT ... my key would NOT open the door! I put it IN the keyhole, turned it to the LEFT, heard the lock disengage with a "click" sound, but it would NOT open. I tried everything. Pushing. Pulling. Praying. Talking to it! Locking and unlocking it x1K! No way the door would open.

I went back to the car to tell Cal what was going on. He was fine with it. He was very comfortably seated in his cushy car seat listening to beautiful music from my phone. I wasn't very worried because Brendan was due home at 3:15 and a few weeks ago when I couldn't get the key to work, Brendan fiddled with the door and finally got it to open--so I figured we'd repeat that scene.

3:15 came and went--NO Brendan. 3:30--NO Brendan. 3:45 NO Brendan. What was adding to my anxiety was that I was very LOW on gas. Great. It was super cold outside and I was running the heat in my car to keep us warm ... but I was on EMPTY.

Finally, Brendan's bus drove up at 3:53! Yikes. It turns out that Brendan's bus had a little accident with a car, the police had to be summoned, and that's why he was so late. Thankfully, no one was injured in any way from the accident. I was so glad to see Brendan. I was just positive he could get open the door for us.

Well ... Brendan tried and tried. I tried again. I prayed more. We both shoved the door and rang the doorbell for no one who was home. We laughed! We tried some more. We gave up.

We went back to the car, where Cal was more than fed up with being strapped into his car seat. I set him free and he came up to the front seat and pressed every button available: the air--on/off, windshield wipers--on/off, turn signals--on/off, etc. I was expecting Aidan and Erin by about 4:10 and when I was looking baffled about THEIR bus being late (at 4:25), Brendan informed me that the very same bus he was delivered home on 40 minutes late, was the one that had to drive back to the elementary school to pick up Erin and Aidan! What?!?!?! So, they were late too.

Meanwhile, in desperation, I called Dylan to get some advice as to what we were going to do while waiting for he and Kelly to return from work. I certainly couldn't conceive of entertaining all four children in my car for another 1.5 hours. Dylan suggested we go over to Woodland Mall to the play area--at least the little kids would have something fun to do while we waited ... and Dylan said he and Kelly would meet us over there because they were taking all of them out to eat afterwards. So that's what we did.

BUT FIRST, I needed gasoline in my almost empty-of-gas car! We pulled into Speedway and I filled up the tank. While we were waiting for the gas to pump, Erin noted the small TV screen on the gas pump and said: "Wow, you can watch TV here!" What?!? Why would anyone in their right mind want to want TV while pumping their gas? Brendan chimed in that it was mostly "ads" anyway. But we started joking around about how pathetic it was ... and then we kind of pretended we stayed there (watching commercials) for another hour and when their folks asks us what we did, we would answer: "We had a great time watching commercials at the Speedway gas pump!" For some reason, this completely cracked us up. And THEN, I told the kids about the time when Kaity and I were getting gas and the lady at the gas pump in front of us, drove away with the nozzle still attached to her car and the nozzle pulled away from the gas tank and bounced along with her car as she drove out of the gas station lot! Aidan thought that was super hilarious and added that it would have been even FUNNIER if the entire gas tank pulled out and she dragged it along with her too. And then one of the kids mentioned something about the entire gas station blowing up ... and the kids kept adding more and more ridiculous-ness to the story. These kiddos are a lot of fun.

We finally DID get to the play place at Woodland. I had brought four containers of cantaloupe (like I always do) for an after-school snack for the kids. I'm glad I had this with me because all of the kids were hungry, and the play place is right next to the Food Court -- they all wanted to eat very badly. Dylan and Kelly had plans to take the kids out for dinner and I didn't want them to spoil their appetites, so they actually settled for the cantaloupe and cucumbers I brought. Whew.

Erin. She can make herself entirely comfortable any place she goes! Isn't she a scream?

Here they are eating cantaloupe. Sweeties.

Right after the kids had their snack, they went back into the play area. There were lots and lots of kids in the area, and it was difficult to keep track of the three little people I was responsible for. Suddenly, Cal announced that he had to go potty--RIGHT NOW! Yikes. The bathrooms are nowhere NEAR the play area. There was no choice but to take EVERYONE with me to the bathroom with Cal. I finally rounded up Aidan and Erin and we walked over to the bathrooms, having to go right past all of the yummy food at the Food Court. I found a Family Bathroom and got all of the three little ones and me inside. Brendan waited for us at the play area--after all, he is nearly 13.

Afterwards, we hung out at the smaller play area right across from the other one where there are little vehicles kids can ride ($1/each). I didn't have any one's with me; and thankfully, the kiddos say when their folks bring them here, they don't always have $$ either; they were content to pretend to drive. Erin was really in the mood to have her picture taken ...

Isn't she the dearest?

And I was surprised that Aidan put up with me snapping his picture today too! Yay!

All four of them piled into this race car for a "group" picture ...

You can see how well we did with that ...

I love you, Aidan Paul! You are getting so big--almost EIGHT years old now!

Little Cal was quite tired ... it was nearly 6:00 when I received a call from Kelly stating she had been delayed--could we meet her back at the house? So we did!

Some time between now and next Friday, we have to get this "door thing" figured out! They do have a code on their garage door, but it isn't presently working. Perhaps I can just drive over to Kelly's work on the way to their house and get the garage door opener from her vehicle. We'll figure it out, I'm sure. 

I will say--even with all of the "misadventure" that occurred today, it was good to be with these little ones. They are delightful people, extremely interesting, and they love me. My heart is full.