Friday Flew By and Grandkid Saturday

Yes, Friday flew by just like I thought it would. Someone came and gladly picked up the six storm / screen combination windows that we were selling on the local Facebook buy sell trade page. They are going to use them to close in their porch at their cottage up north. I love it when people can repurpose and recycle, so glad they were able to use them.

It was such a nice day, and since Steve didn't need to go to work, he washed the entire motorhome. He uses the pressure washer set on gentle flow and uses only car wash soap on our motorhome. It never needs wax and we never use stainless steel cleaner on the lower portion either. Once you remove the protective finish, then you have to polish it all of the time. For 22 years it has held up with just gentle car wash soap.

I could hear the pressure washer out there going faster and was wondering what he was up to. It turns out he was power washing his Weber Baby Q grill in the driveway. He took off a summer's worth of grime and grease.

I was working out in the garage on restoring a Union Loom. Soon it will be ready to post for sale. My friend Tina mailed me some extra heddles that arrived today. Now I can get the harnesses put together.  Maybe on Sunday we will finish assembling it and getting it ready to sell it.


Before we knew it, Friday was over and Saturday had begun. We got up early and grabbed some coffee and headed out the door. We had to meet a fellow Sheltie Rescue Adopter at the Outagamie Dog Club. It turns out her sassy Sheltie Liam chewed a hole in the middle of a hand-woven rug that I had made for her. He is very embarrassed and deeply regretful of his actions.

I am going to see if I can repair it by needle weaving in new warp threads and restoring it back to its original condition.  It will take a bit of concentration, but I have repaired a few before, and it looks like I can do this one.


From there, we zoomed up to Oconto to spend some time with some of our grandchildren. We weren't going to see our son Dan and his wife Heather's kids this time because they were in Manitowoc with Heather's family celebrating homecoming.

First we went to our daughter Heather and Jesse's house so Steve could help with some wheel bearing and hub repairs on their minivan.  Jesse had started it, but he got stuck somewhere in the process. He needed torches and a bigger chisel to get the hub free. Steve went to see if he could help further the repair along. While he was working outside with Heather, I spent some time inside with little Whitney who is 2 and Jameson who is 9.

My Little Hippie Mini Me was busy playing with some heart shaped beads that I had brought along to play with. She really enjoyed them last time I babysat, so I brought them again. Do you know that she wears crazy tie-dyed shirts like her Grandma!?

Jameson and Whitney both enjoyed reading our favorite story books of all time. Jameson has the one with Grover from Sesame Street, about "The Monster at the End of This Book". Whitney has our all-time favorite "Brown Bear Brown Bear". We read it with all of the grandchildren and they all know it by heart, from cover to cover.

Silly little Whitney was playing her game of "tada" which means she has to dash in and out and in and out, each time announcing her presence and delight when Grandma exclaims "tada"!

We even made a little movie clip of it
So she could watch it over and over
 while we made lunch:

Meanwhile, outside, Steve was working on the minivan. Silly Heather is trying to assist with a hammer, and I don't think she's really helping too much. But she was doing the research and finding out the information and ordering the parts that could be picked up in town.

Once they finally got it all put back together, she was so excited to take it for a test drive! Yep, they are back to being a two-car family, not having to rely just on the Jeep for transportation.

While the grown-ups were busy
out in the garage working on the van,
Jameson was indoors working on lunch!

He rolled out little refrigerator biscuits with a mini rolling pin,

Then covered them with pizza sauce, and then pepperonis and cheese and seasoning.

Our budding MasterChef made little mini pizzas for everybody! 

What a great job Jameson!

And believe me, they tasted as good as they looked!

I really enjoyed baking and cooking with Jameson. He watches that cooking show on TV with the children, and cooks often in the kitchen with his mother. I believe tomorrow morning they are going to make some kind of special chocolate chip pancakes with cream cheese pudding filling!!?!

It was such a beautiful day, we went outside with all of the dogs. Our two shelties and their two corgis.  Heather paid me back for our help by trimming the ends of my hair for me. She could snip away and let the hairs fly off in the breeze. She didn't cut much, just trimmed off the bottom edge and neatened it up for me

Grandpa sure was having fun playing with Whitney. Now that she's 2 years old she is so engaging and silly and has quite a sense of humor. This is her little ball pit that she got on her birthday. What a fun toy!

After we said our goodbyes, it was time to buzz into town to our other daughter's house, and see three more grandkids! Our daughter Erin, sadly, was at work on such a beautiful day. But our son-in-law Waylen was home and had just gotten back from taking the children to the Harvest Fest celebration in town. Chelsea and Clayton proudly displayed their face tattoos and painted pumpkins.

And baby Claire had been trying to eat a gourd!

They hauled out some blow bubbles and a bubble machine to play in the yard. Their silly dad took out the leaf blower and was blowing the bubbles around into the air. Just a little bit of turbulence assistance!

Now here is where I get choked up:

Granddaughter Chelsea had made this special book in school and gave it to me. The wonderful teachers at Oconto Elementary School have been making these books for a number of years with the children as authors. I have two of them that Jameson had made as well. I treasure them. This one Chelsea had titled "My Grandma Rocks"...

I guess I do?

We gave hugs all around, said goodbye, and stopped at the local Thompson's grocery store for my favorite Italian bread. Now we headed 70 miles back home. It's days like this I wish we just lived 5 miles down the river like we used to. We could be so much closer to all of the grandkids than down in Chilton. Oh well, I guess it just makes our visits all the more special when they come to sleepover, or if we go up there to visit.

We will be back up there in 2 weeks to visit with all of the grandchildren and everyone for little baby Claire's first birthday!!! It will be so good to see them all again.  Allegra and Mason too!

And then the weekend after that is the big Halloween celebration at High Cliff State Park where we will see everybody once again! October seems to be the really special month for seeing all of these grandchildren. Now that the rush and hubbub of school shopping and school starting and getting settled into schedules is done, there is more time to spend visiting and enjoying the grandchildren.