March Visitors

A few weeks ago during the week of St. Patricks Day we had the pleasure of hosting some family at out house. Grandma Jan, Grandpa Stephen and cousin Gavin visited us. On our first day together we woke up to a GREEN breakfast. Green pancakes, milk and yogurt. The kids ran around the house trying to find the leprechaun that made it all green. Later that morning Gavin was able to join Jake and Casey at their Kindermusik class. Casey and Jake enjoyed showing him all their songs, fun activities and to meet their wonderful teacher Ms Stephanie. Later that evening we dressed up in all our green glory (although the only one with some Irish in their blood is Chris) to celebrate St. Paddy's Day. We ate at Ernie's, not a Irish pub, but still a good place for food. We stayed away from the crowded pubs/bars, just not a the best place to bring your kids to. The corned beef was excellent and we left there with stuffed belly's. Later that evening Chris and I had our very first Irish Car Bomb. I thought it was okay, Chris was not a fan.



On the second day together we hung around the house and when the weather got nice we headed out for soccer and baseball outside. The boys kept Grandpa and Chris (who was home after taking a 1/2 day off from work) busy. On Thursday we had a relaxing morning at the Warren Community Center in their swimming pool, waterpark and lazy river. It's the same place where the kids go for swimming lessons. Jake and Gavin probably made 50 trips down the water slides and Casey spent over an hour floating in the lazy river. We ended that day with a movie night at home, popcorn and candy treats.


Grandma Jan helped sew up a small hole on the leg of Casey's horse.

Grandma I love you!


On our last day we headed to the Detroit Science Center downtown. We've been members since October and wanted to share this great kid place with Gavin. We started the morning with 2 shows. And IMAX show called Animalopolis. Next we saw "The Secret of the Cardboard Rocket" in the Planetarium. Two great shows for the kids. This was Gavin and Gma's first time inside a planetarium. For the remainder of the day we played in KidsTown (the preschool interactive play area) and also strolled through the larger exhibits of the science center. We finally left the place when we heard an announcement at 3pm, "the science center is now closing". Before leaving we stopped in the gift shop for Gma and Gpa to spoil the kids. Gpa had selected a small planet mobile for Jake to hang in his room, but Jake had his eye of a large scale space shuttle toy. The space shuttle was more than what Gma/Gpa were planning to spend. They gave Jake the option to choose the mobile for his room or choose the shuttle and have that be his birthday gift and need to wait until June to open it. He chose the shuttle. On our way home he was able to hold the box on his lap and we told him that the shuttle would go in the basement later that evening to save until June. He asks "Mommy - Is it June 1 tomorrow?". It was a tough couple of days for him as he learned that he needed to wait for the special present. Now it's been out of sight and out of mind so he doesn't talk about it anymore. But I thought that was an interesting lesson for him. Choose the smaller gift and play with it now, or choose the larger gift and wait for it.

During all this drama of gifts with Jake, little Casey was quite content in a small corner of the gift shop collecting small rocks. She had a small felt bag and she could get as many rocks that fit into that bag. Yep, that's my girl, happy to have a bag of ROCKS. Thanks Gma and Gpa for the wonderful gifts. We ended the night with a delicious home made fish fry with all the extras (coleslaw, mac n cheese, potatoes). We sure loved having them visit with us for the week.