Swimming Days!

The repairs to our swimming pool are finally completed and this past week the three C's came for a couple of swim days. The girls love being in the water and although the swimming skills that were learned previously are a bit rusty, with a few more days in the water they will return.

On Monday both Paula and Mike were able to come, so the girls did not need to wear their life jackets. They had lots of fun with the pool toys.

Chris, if you look really carefully, can be seen in the little blow-up car. He enjoyed it for a while but wearing a life jacket wasn't his idea of lots of fun.

When the girls called the night before to ask about coming, Claire requested that we snack on some "baby pig ribs". Wow, do those girls like ribs! We think it is pretty funny that they are planning menus now. For Father's Day, they had requested that we have crab. Both requests were granted, naturally.

Since we were not going to be together to celebrate the 4th of July we decided to celebrate a little early. I baked a cake and Papa decorated it into a flag. Who knew that Papa had such skills? Actually, Papa is/was a wonderful cook prior to becoming partially disabled.

On Friday, they came again for a short swim. Chris was more interested in hanging out outside of the pool. He did play with the hose for some time and was pretty content.

Chloe is on the air mattress. Life jackets required this day because only Mike was able to come.

Papa and Claire.....

Ugh ~~! Chris can open and close the screen sliding door. If we keep the inside glass door closed however, he is still safe when inside the house. The pool is a real concern when the kids are this small.
A little juice break for Chris.

Hopefully, we will have lots more visits this summer. Nothing like a some sunshine and water for a day of fun!

Lots To Learn!

Our Grandchildren day this week was full of laughter and maybe a little mischief on Papa's part. Below you see Claire and Chris enjoying their midmorning snack which happened to be wheat-thin crackers. I'm not remembering what was delighting Chris so much but he sure was enjoying the moment.

The children are always interested in Papa's leg orthotic as well as information about his arm that doesn't work too well. He took off his orthotic and let them get the feel of having it on their legs. Each one took a turn.

We had lots of talk time on this visit and Claire and Chloe mentioned again that they had played 'Mary and Martha'. A couple of weeks ago when they had called us, they mentioned on the phone that was what they were playing. I asked Claire which of them plays Mary and which of them plays Martha and to tell me about it. Claire responded that she always plays Mary and Chloe always plays Martha. Claire said, "I am listening to Jesus and Martha just works and works and gets mad at me for not helping". Her sum up at the end was that you should always listen to Jesus rather than just work. Yep, I'm going to remember that! We often hear the girls talking about the stories they hear at preschool and Sunday School. It is so neat to know that so much of it is retained.

Papa's mischief started shortly after that conversation. The girls started discussing lunch and what they wanted to eat. Naturally, they didn't want the same thing. Papa talked to them about flipping a coin and explained that someone had to loose when you flip a coin. They both agreed that they would abide by the coin flip. So the coin was flipped and immediately one of the girls (who shall remain nameless to preserve her privacy :) ) went running off to the bedroom in tears. She was back shortly and the winning twin offered to flip again. Well, the results were the same for three flips and each time the looser ran off to her bedroom. She was never gone more than a minute and recovered quickly. Finally the winning twin offered to have what the loosing twin wanted, she just wanted to make her sister happy. Now, as if that wasn't enough drama for the day, Papa also got to talking about tic-tac-toe. He offered to show them how to play it. Well, the first looser ran off to the bedroom in tears. She returned quickly however, and the other twin lost the next time. She also ran off to the bedroom in tears. This went on for several games, one after the other. They would loose, run off in dispair, and then return a few minutes later wanting to play again. The final straw was a game where it was a tie and Papa announced that neither one of them had won, and that the 'cat' (as we always said in our home) was the winner and drew a big 'C' through the game. Now both girls immediately ran off to their bedroom in tears, and I mean real tears! The bad thing was that by now Papa and I were laughing so hard it made it worse. One of the girls maintained that the game was not fair!!! Lessons learned, I think we will choose our activities more carefully next time. I have decided after thinking about it, that maybe if you are a younger sibling you might be more able to accept that you are going to often loose to an older sibling, but when you are exactly the same age, your expectations are different. Whatever the case, we sure need to work on sportsmanship.

Below you can see Chris watching to see if anyone is noticing that he is about to play with one of the girls' LeapPads. Normally we keep them up when not in use. He didn't get away with it for long I might add.

Chloe asked me if I would take a movie of her. If you click on this link you can see what she had to say. So sweet. Once again I am unable to upload movies to this blogspot. I need to get to the bottom of this.

Looking forward to celebrating our wonderful freedoms and our country this week. I am so thankful for what we have, and for the opportunities we have been given, and to live in such a great country. God has truly blessed the USA, may we never take that for granted.