Grandma’s Camp 2013 or How to Lose Your Mind in Three Short Days

Okay, that last bit on my post was just my crazy sense of humor. This has been such a busy, hectic, fun, crazy few days. It started Saturday with a bunch of kids coming to swim in our pool. They all had a lot of fun. On Father’s Day, we had some of our children and grandchildren here for swimming and a cook out. Then three of the boys stayed for another three days. All of them are under seven. Need I say more.

We tried to pack a month’s worth of activity in three short days. Monday we took the boys to the Croc store to buy them all Crocs so that we wouldn’t be fastening sandals all the time and they could get them dirty and we could just wash them off. We took them to the park to play. We took them to the army museum near our home where they learned just how many of the army vehicles their Grandpa had driven during his thirty-six years in the Army National Guard. Then we took them to a lake where they bothered an old man fishing so we didn’t stay long there. They painted birdhouses that their Grandpa had built for them. They actually got more paint on the birdhouses than on themselves or me. They helped with the chickens. They swam for hours. We took them to McDonald’s where I haven’t eaten in years. Had forgotten how good a Big Mac is. They sat in the hot tub. They played Dizzios. I took them for a two mile walk. They picked cherries to feed the chickens. They swam some more. They watched a movie(only because Grandpa and Grandma needed a break.) That was just Sunday evening and Monday.

On Tuesday we took them to a really great place in our town called the Kid’s Commons. It’s a place where kids can do all kinds of things like make giant bubbles, do experiments, play games, build things, crawl in and out of secret places, and get flushed down a giant toilet. Yes, a giant toilet, but it is actually a slide. It is advertised as the world’s largest toilet. Our town needs to be known for something. The boys loved it. We spent almost three hours there before lunch. Then we took them to another great place in our town called Zaharako’s, a wonderful old fashioned ice cream parlor. It has a calliope they play every so often and a wonderful old time soda fountain. We almost lost this wonderful place before a man in our town decided to return it to its former glory. The calliope had been stored somewhere in California and he found it and brought it back and had it installed once again in the parlor. The boys had root beer floats and ice cream with a cherry on top after their lunch. By that time, David remembered we were parked in a three hour parking place and we had been gone for four and a half hours. We walked to the car fearing we would find a parking ticket on our windshield, but we were lucky we did not have one. Whew. Then we came home and we tried to get the boys to rest for a while, but no one slept. We had had a major meltdown Monday evening because all the boys were so tired and we didn’t want it to happen again. But all was well for the rest of the day. The boys spent hours in the pool. I think they must have jumped into the pool a few hundred times and our two youngest started to learn to swim. A great difference from last year when our youngest grandson was afraid of the water.

Today at seven o’clock, the older grandson and me were in the hot tub. Soon the others joined us. Then I went back to take water to the chickens and Bonnie got in the pen and grabbed my lame chicken, Freedom. I got her away from her and then she grabbed her again. All the time I was screaming for David to come help me as Bonnie is a very big, strong dog. We finally got her out of the pen and I went to check on Freedom and she was none the worse for wear. The second time in a week she has been attacked by our dogs. Gonna have to be more careful going in and out of the pen. Freedom is one tough little chicken.

We took the boys to the steakhouse for lunch and then drove the two youngest home where the boys played with their pygmy goats and looked at their chickens. We then took the last grandson to a friend’s house. Driving home David said, “Do you hear that?” I said, “What?” and he said, “The quiet.” Yes, I heard it and it kind of made me sad. I miss them already, but the quiet is nice.

Here are a few pictures from Grandma’s Camp.

Cousins swimming.

Hot tubbing.

Peter Pan flying.

The soda fountain. Even the cash registers look old but are computerized. The young man at the register goes to our church. The red head in the forefront is one of our grandboys.