Saturday, June 27, 2015

June 25 & 26, 2015

Two Days With the Grands!
June 25 & 26, 2015



Six months ago, our daughter-in-law, her mother and her sister planned a trip; a trip for late June.  Little did they know that at this time, Barbara's family would have just been in their newly purchased house for 6 days; a house still filled with boxes and boxes.  They left Thursday morning and will be back Saturday afternoon.

Her trip meant that seven children needed to be cared for on Thursday and Friday while our son was at work.  We ended up deciding that my mom, Carmen, and I would all go and have a good time with the children. 
 Five of the children in the living room watching or playing a video game.
Thursday morning, some of the big kids played video games while others found other activities.  The youngest of the boys is the hardest to keep busy.  He doesn't entertain himself well, unlike his baby sister who loves to play alone.  I asked him to help me clean the back patio.  Well, actually I didn't tell him what we were going to do.
 My little helper
Across the back of their house, is this huge porch that goes most of the way across the house.  It had not been cleaned in a long time, so I started sweeping and asked him if he knew where a hose was.  He did, and soon he came dragging the end of the hose.  I asked him to wash the area I had swept.  I noticed it was going to take more than sweeping and rinsing, and Carmen joined us and scrubbed the patio while my little guy rinsed it.
Much to my delight and surprise, this little guy completed the job joyfully and stayed dry.  I was sure I would end up taking him in soaking wet.
He enjoyed the job.  I was soaking wet from sweat.  He was having the time of his life.  He got the spray water bottle and asked what he could clean.  I had him clean the patio windows and you would have thought I gave him a treasure.  For the next two days those windows were always spotless!
My sweet little helper
He cleaned all the glass panels on the balcony and along the stairwell.  Anything that could withstand sprayed water, got his attention.  Each child found ways to stay busy.

One of the other boys set up his army men on the window bars.

We did have a good time, but it was also a lot of work.  Complicating the trip were those still packed boxes.  The children all had enough clothes unpacked, as well as enough toys to keep them occupied.  The missing things were kitchen items like: hot pads, aluminum foil, and general pantry items. 

The missing hot pads created a unique problem Thursday night.  I had prepared a great supper with some help from Carmen.  We had broccoli with cheese sauce, ham, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, and French bread.  When it was time for the food to come out of the ovens, I asked our son to get them out since we were using folded kitchen towels for pot holders.  It turned out that the missing hot pads were not the only problem; another was a oven shelf that had been put in incorrectly. 
Tile floor with a topping of melted marshmallows!
As my son tried to get the sweet potatoes out, the wrongly installed shelf tilted downward allowing the dish of sweet potatoes to slide out and across the floor spilling most of its contents.  We are so thankful that no one was hurt and actually the mess was very neatly spread in a straight line making clean up a breeze. 
Actually clean up went quickly
I have a reputation for burning the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes (sometimes including flames).  My reputation continues to grow.  This is the stuff of which legends are made.  The Lady Who
Could Never Get the Sweet Potatoes to the Table;
that's me. The dish did not even turn over so the three servings left in the bowl disappeared as we served.  And can you believe it?  The marshmallows were perfectly browned this time!
What was left of our supper
The day had been filled with good activities.  I had been up since 5:00 a.m., so I was ready for a good night's sleep.  It was not too hard to get the children to bed and the next morning, they slept late.  I got up at 7:00, but I think it was after 8:00 before the two little boys woke up Friday morning.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs (some with chopped ham), mini powdered sugar donuts, and cereal.  Most of these children take after their dad and would be happy to eat 4 or 5 bowls of cereal for breakfast and skip lunch.  I didn't allow that, but it sure brought back memories of how much their dad loved cereal for breakfast when he was growing up.

Carmen, one of my granddaughters and I went to run some errands and picked up a nice variety of fruit.  The children love grapes, cherries, peaches, and oranges (just to name a few) and we had all at the meals Friday.  The peaches were perfect and when we got home and fixed lunch with chicken nuggets and all the fruit, they all ate well.  The peaches disappeared rapidly, so when another errand had to be run that afternoon, we got more. Yummy!  Supper was more nuggets, left over ham, and trays of fruits and veggies.  They all cleaned their plates.

The very youngest and the older boys, are most settled in the new location.  There are several large storage closets in this new house and one has been turned into a playhouse for the youngest.  She often went in there, shut the door and stayed for long periods of time.  There is also a walk-in closet in the girls' room that she loves to play in.  She plays so well alone, but also loves to play with especially her oldest sister. 
Friday was over before I knew it.  We will have several of the children next week so that they can attend Vacation Bible School here at our church with their friends. 

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