They Call Him Papa

After we finished raising our seven kids, Lloyd and I discovered the joys of grandchildren. It's such a rewarding feeling interacting with your babies' babies...spoiling them, playing with them, teaching them, and then giving them back to their parents. We both love the little critters and over the years Lloyd has become a loving and involved Papa to the 17 we have so far.

This is Baron, #17 in the line-up.

Lloyd likes exploring the world with them (Kenny)

He sits and plays games with them (Brooklyn)

He jumps and plays with them (Sydney)

And plays in their back yards with them (Anson)

He teaches them to play golf so that he'll have partners in his old age (Layla, Nathan)

Sometimes he just sits and relaxes with them (James and Micah)

Other times he lays down and relaxes with them (Micah)

and they climb over him (Kenzie and Brooklyn)

He goes climbing with them at Writing On Stone Park in Alberta (Nathan, Jonah and Sam)

And at White Tank Mountain in Arizona (Charlie and Max)

And sometimes he has to carry one of them down a mountain (Elly)

He listens to them while they go through the Christmas Wish Catalogue (Layla)

Eating with them is always fun too (Sam, Jonah, Nathan, Micah)

But most of all he just loves them and they love him back. I hope they all realize what a great man their Papa is and how much he loves them.

My apologies to Aidan and Alex not being able to find pictures of them with their Papa.

Pretty Stuff

Isn't it pretty...

I've wanted to take pictures of this for quite a while now.

The colors are so bright and vibrant...

...ever changing...

...the pinks...

...the greens, blues, and purples.

You weren't fooled were you. You knew what it was all along.

When I picked Max and Charlie up after school we stopped at the local car wash on the way home. It's always a fun time. I had stopped at the entrance to talk to the attendant and pay for the service. The kids were screaming at me, begging me, to close my window before going in. Of course that just encouraged me to leave the window down longer than I probably would have. I so love to put some excitement into their lives :) We were never in danger of getting wet.

I remember the love/fear relationship our little kids had with the car washes. The noise and moving brushes/strips that were used would spook them, although they loved going with us to get the car washed. Our oldest son, Rob, used to make up his own words back then when he was 4 or 5 and his word for the car washes was "car-a-bath-pool". We called it that for years.

Go on out and get your cars washed...entertain your kids!

Candyland with Dora the Explorer

Lloyd and I had dinner and fun at Rob and Cindy's place last weekend and during the course of the evening, 5-year old Brooklyn got out her Dora the Explorer Candyland game. (that's not a tattoo on her arm - she was at a birthday party earlier in the day and the face painter panted ladybugs climbing on leaves on her arm)...anyway, back to Candyland...

I hear this game has been around for many years. We had lots of games for our 7 kids when they were growing up (before video and computer games were invented!) but I don't recall ever having Candyland in the house. It's a remarkably simple game that pre-readers can easily play, and is surprisingly fun for adults too...although I'm sure most of you already know that. I've played it before with Kenzie and Sydney but Lloyd had never had the pleasure before. I'm willing to bet he'll be playing it again now that he's tried it.

The Dora twist was interesting. Luckily having spent a lot of time babysitting grandkids I'm familiar with the whole Dora family. Brooklyn was Boots, I was Dora and Lloyd was Diego, complete with pseudo latino accent and an agressive (cheating) attitude that the real Diego would never have.

Happily for Brooklyn, Boots got to the finish first, but only after Dora and Diego had to backtrack to broken cookies, spilled ice cream, or whatever other bad luck squares there were. Funny that Boots only landed on squares that moved her forward!

We really had to watch Diego carefully though because he didn't believe in following the winding path and kept trying to jump across to the next twist of the path and get ahead of everyone - kind of like Swiper would do if he were playing...SWIPER...NO SWIPING...

We had a fun time. I challenge any of you with a Candyland game in your homes, attics or basement storage, to dig them out and have a game or two with the young people in your lives.