Family Days

Here are my two little love's that were here with their parents two weekends ago.  They are growing so fast.  They're at halfsies in age - 6 and 3 and they get along well together.  Mainly because the older one is very tolerant of the little guy who is still working on his sharing skills but doing a good job for a 3-year-old.

They both had fun showing off their splashing skills jumping into the pool which luckily has been warm and in the 80's the last couple of weeks as opposed to last summer when we could barely get it into the low 70's.

Papa was able to hook up the wagon to the tractor and give them a little bit of a ride around the yard.

A collection of feathers they found exploring the yard.  

And we were able to get a picture of them with their great-grandmother, my mother before she left although the little one was a bit skeptical.  They haven't seen her since before the pandemic and she was unfamiliar to them, but she was happy to be here to get to see them. 

The little guy and his parents slept over and we were able to chase some balloons the next morning.  We, the adults, quickly got dressed and scooped him up still in his pj's to try to find out which diretion they were going.  Having him barefoot and in pj's meant he had to be held and turned out to be more manageable.  We were lucky to find a place to park in a local ball park to stop and see a lot of them go overhead.  He enjoyed it to a point.  

He found my little fairy garden on the plant shelf and did some rearranging.  Little boys have a way of making things work for them, like using a flamingo as a shovel, and burying little piggies face down in the dirt, and picking up every figure to ask me what it was.  But he was gentle with the plants though they are pretty scraggly to begin with.  

This past weekend we were at the condo with GS1.  We picked him up early on Friday because he doesn't have summer camp on Fridays and got busy.  After dropping off his "suitcase", we went over to the miniature golf center for his first mini golf experience.  

It was very hot and 18 holes is a lot for a first time.  We showed him how to putt but after a while he told us that he could do it "his way".  

It was nice to find a place inside the cave to sit and cool off for a few minutes.  Lucky for us that there wasn't a group following us so we could take our time.  

At the end there was a photo opportunity with the resident shark for our "Shark Week" lover and his papa.

After lunch and some time in the pool there was fishing at the dock.  Papa showed him how to bait the hook with the bait fish and he was not squeamish at all.

There were 3 fish caught that day - one kept.  The next day we went over earlier in the day and between the three of us caught 8.  Everytime HWNSNBP or I hooked one we had him reel them in.  I think we kept 5 of them altogether.  There was a lot of chatter around us as we were the only ones catching anything.  People asked what we were using for bait, etc.  We fish for snappers - small blue fish - with spearing as bait and pencil bobbers on the line.  Most of the other people at the dock use lures and weights and fish the bottom with success at times.  We don't always catch fish when we're there but thankfully we were lucky to have two good days while GS1 was with us making it a better experience for him.

While I was looking for a picture of some cow rays on my computer to show him, we stumbled across this project that he wanted to try.  Luckily we had a green bottle in the recycling and some of the craft supplies in a box that I had brought from home.  We did have to make a quick trip to the Dollar Tree for some googly eyes and pompoms (and a few more fun things were added to the basket while there).  We had the glow sticks, but of course bought more.  And once we saw the metallic pipe cleaners we knew that those would be a good substitute for the pastel ones that I had brought.  He cut the wings out of a paper plate without even making a pattern first which I loved.  We used a hot glue gun to stick everything to the bottle.  I held the gun and squeezed and he placed the pieces in place.  There was only one little mishap, but there were no blisters.  

BTW - He got his black eye at his gym class a couple of days before our visit.  

We were all a bit tired from all the outside activities of the two days and he wound up taking himself upstairs for a little nap before his mom and dad came to go in the pool with us late Saturday afternoon.  It was a wonderful visit all around and we hope to get to do it again soon.