Grandma Julia's Thursday

Today was my second promised Fun Day with the grandchildren. I don't get the entire day because the older children do a couple of school assignments first and they almost always have evening activities, so I get maybe six hours from noon to six p.m. Fortunately that's enough time to have some serious fun.

Our second Fun Day started late because we had the rare opportunity for Bentley to meet with a geologist and we weren’t going to pass that up. My friend Jan was visiting from out-of-state with her husband David who is a retired geologist. I asked if he would meet with Bentley to discuss rocks. Thursday was a good day for them, so they came over and we talked rocks for a couple of hours. It was great.

We started off our Fun Day with a stained glass paint ornament session. The children had requested this particular activity and I had fortuitously found what they wanted at Michaels! (You have to be at Michaels on the right day to get the best holiday craft kits. They come in and go out of Michaels fast.)

l to r (both rows): Evan, Lincoln, Viva, Jake, Bentley

After the five each painted two ornaments, we took a vote and they wanted to go sledding. We headed to the sledding hill across the street. The hill did not have the best snow coverage because we haven't had enough snow this winter, but the children had a great time except for when a two year old who couldn't control her sled ran into Evan and knocked him down. Evan recovered, but after that he opted to slide down the hill without a sled. We stayed for almost two hours.

After we came back home I and Viva attempted to teach Jake and Bentley how to make origami lucky stars. Viva and I learned how to make them from a YouTube video last month. Jake picked up how to fold them quickly, but he has a hard time plumping them into stars. Bentley did not master this craft at all which surprised me because he is good at other forms of origami.