Tacoma Trip-Day Two and Three

Just normal "grandma" heaven--nothing major organized, just hanging out, having conversations, reading books, sharing moments and having yummy pizza for dinner! (And some of that with Tosha and Austen, as well...not just the grandkids.)

Thursday morning the three of them joined me for my morning walk on their bikes.  Of course, we stopped by Carter Lake to watch the ducks for a few minutes.

They traveled a bit faster than I did, but did a great job in stopping and waiting.  I enjoyed the beautiful trees and the many wildflowers along the trail that we took.

Ava

Another stop at a playground to exercise some different muscles...

Niki

Ava

Cooper

Niki

Back home, we built with the maga-tiles which are quite fun to work with.  My kids would have loved them when they were little, too.

Cooper was busy using his tablet to find pictures of the weapons in a video game he likes.  Then he would use lego pieces to recreate the tool/weapon as close as he could.  He is an excellent lego builder.

No picture of Thursday night movie night where we had popcorn and candy (and no parents were home.)

Friday, Cooper opted out of the morning walk, but Niki and Ava joined me, walking the whole way with me.

Reading my sister Valerie's book-- "Little Bear's Turn" with Ava.  Niki is also interested in being an author so he was very excited to talk about my sister, the author.

Tosha had to work on Friday, so we had another quiet night of neighborhood fun.  Austen and I sat outside talking with neighbors while the kids played up and down the street with other kids.

Ava had begun working on this cardboard house and brought it out again to work on it.  She brought out a large container of markers, tape, and three pairs of scissors.  When I asked her why she needed three, since you can only use one at a time and it wasn't like they cut differently from each one.  However, she knew better than I---in a very short time, she had some helper builders including her brother and the neighbor.  They worked together in a great example of cooperative play as they made mailboxes, a firestack and other additions to it.

Niki was mostly involved in playing basketball and other physical activities although he did take some time to do some drawing.

While we went in for dinner, the neighbor boy had taken the box to his garage to work on and then after dinner, he brought in back to their garage and they kept on building, drawing and playing.  I love watching kids play together and with such delight.

As I knew it would be, the time had flown by so fast....but it was a sweet uncomplicated time together and I hoped that they would remember those little moments, too.

Plans were made for a birthday breakfast celebration for all of them on Saturday morning. Austen had just the place picked out to go. I tucked them into bed one more time and climbed into bed to read my scriptures and to finish a book I was reading on my phone.  It was a good day!