Cooler Weather

Tuesday Shaunna and Madilyn came over to spend some time with Grannie. It's hard for either of the girls (S & L) to just take a day off and leave their household duties on hold so that they can just visit and relax over here. I remember those days, so long ago, when I was in THAT phase of my life.

We didn't get as much "fun stuff" packed into the morning as Madilyn would have liked, but she did have some fun with me. A simple game of throwing the ball back and forth is exciting when you are three and getting all of the attention. They left and went to their house so Shaunna could put together a picnic lunch and we met at the park at noon. Two of Shaunna's friends met us there with four more little kids. It was a beautiful day and before we knew it the time had come to leave the park and the three mom's had to start picking up their other children from school. I needed to go to the grocery store but instead I came home and rested first!

Shaunna wasn't feeling well on Tuesday and continued to get worse. Joshua helped out with taking care of Madilyn on Wednesday so that she could rest as much as possible.

Missionaries Bill and Mary Horton were at church Wednesday night and as much as I would have liked to hear Bill preach, I wanted more that everyone else get to hear him, so I took all of the grandkids outside to play once the song service was over.

We began the playtime with the game "red light/green light" which would have been pretty simple for me except THEY want to be "it" so I ended up IN the game much more than I had planned on. Childhood pleasures are so simple! The kids have just about 5 acres to run around on, but for the most part, they stayed pretty close by. I had brought 6 balls, some sidewalk chalk and lemonade from home and they were content with all of that. It got dark so I went inside to turn on some outside lights and that began an entire new, fun activity....drawing people's shadows. It's easy to forget that to children, getting to run around outside in the dark is a fun experience all it's own, but throw in the funny L O N G shadows that you can make and the giggles abound!

Vincent called around 7:30 Thursday morning to let me know that Shaunna needed me to take care of Madilyn for the day because she was still sick. Madilyn was a sweetheart all day and such a precious little doll to hang out with! She plays SO WELL all by herself but Grannie went outside and played ball with her too. Next we went for a long, slow walk all the way up to the school and back, all the while talking about this and that and really enjoying our little adventure. I stopped as often as Madilyn wanted to so that she could pick up sticks, leaves, rocks & berries, or so she could run up into yards to investigate their "yard art" statues, etc. We met a 90 year old lady twice during our walk, that was out walking by herself, she just went on and on about how cute Madi was. She herself has 30 great grandchildren!

After lunch I read a couple of books to Madilyn while we were sitting on the couch in the living room, she was yawning and I knew that I was tired, so we moved the reading into the bed and it wasn't but a few more minutes and she was fast asleep.

Laurie and Elijah came by for an hour or less so Laurie could get some of her photos off of my computer. Elijah was in a great playful mood and I enjoyed watching him play. I think he will be crawling everywhere by the end of October and I will need to start having a lot of things put away when he is here. Madilyn woke up about the time that Laurie needed to leave, so she took Madi home.

Shaunna, get well soon.

About 11:00 last night after Joe and I were in bed, he reminded me to be sure and write about my time with Madi.