Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Grams Camp - Session 1 - Just for June

One of the things that has been important to us since Our Little Princesses came along is for them to be comfortable staying with us. They live about two hours away, so it's pretty easy to get them for a weekend.

Ezra has visited us alone many times, starting well before she was a year old. But, as the second child, June has never been to visit us alone. This summer, Ezra is five and June is three, so I thought this might be a good time to split Grams Camp into two separate sessions. Towards the end of June, Omi had invited Ezra to go to vacation bible school, but June is not quite old enough yet. Katy and I decided that would be a good week to have June come for a solo visit.

Katy and Travis came and brought both girls for my birthday weekend. When they left on Sunday, June stayed for the week. Katy had tried very hard to prepare her for staying alone, but it was clear that she was feeling a little uncomfortable about the rest of the family leaving while she stayed behind.

As part of the preparation, they had watched the episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood that teaches that grown ups come back. The episode is titled Daniel Goes to School. We ended up keeping that handy and watching it a couple of times during the week.

Overall, she did great. The secret was keeping her busy. It was really fun to spend one-on-one time with her. When you get her alone, her personality just shines. She's much quieter when her big sister is not around. I was also impressed with her attention span. For a three year old, she can focus on a project or craft for quite a long time.

We started with a trip to Dollar Tree where we bought some crafting supplies and some paint with water kits. I bought two kits for a total cost of $2. Each kit had several pages similar to the ones you see in these photos. Each kit also came with a set of markers and a couple of printed pictures to use them on. She painted these for a little while almost every day she was here. I definitely got my money's worth with these. I will say, the markers were kind of messy, so I threw them away after the first or second day.

The other thing we got at Dollar Tree was the supplies to make a wreath. For the base we used a straw wreath out of my craft closet and I bought eight packages of pom-poms and four bottles of glue for a total of $10.

I moved the kid's table into the living room and covered it with newspaper which I taped into place. We used plain old white school glue which I poured into a disposable bowl so she could just dip the pom-poms in the glue and stick them onto the wreath. It worked perfectly. She loved creating this project and it kept her busy for several hours. Part of the time I worked with her and part of the time I did other things in the room. I did have to help her fill in the inside of the wreath and I helped her fill in some of the blank spaces she left between the pom-poms. When it was finished I added a ribbon from my craft closet and hung it on the door of the Princesses' room.

We really had hoped to be able to go swimming a couple of times during June's visit, but the weather did not cooperate. We had thunderstorms and rain almost every afternoon while she was here so we had to otherwise occupy ourselves.

We got a lot of mileage out of the pom-poms. There were quite a few left over from the wreath project and she played with them a lot. I have a big can that I normally keep colored pencils in. She emptied the pencils into a plastic basket and used the can to hold her pom-poms.

I have a ceramic teapot and two cups sitting on my coffee table. I've never used them, I just thought they were pretty and bought them from the silent auction at the family reunion last fall. She filled them with pom-poms and played tea party with them off and on all week. So on Wednesday afternoon, when it was raining yet again, I decided we should have a real tea party.

One of my fondest memories is tea parties with my Granny. She would make grape Kool-Aid and let us serve it out of an old aluminum teapot. She always had homemade cookies to serve with it. We would spread a blanket out in the yard and have an afternoon tea party.

I let her choose a tablecloth for her little table and we added a mason jar of flowers so we had a centerpiece. I let her brew the tea using my Keurig coffee maker. I didn't have any cookies, but we had cheese and crackers with fresh strawberries.


Since she was here during the week of my birthday, she went along when Patrick took me out to dinner to celebrate. She also got treated to frozen yogurt one evening after dinner.


In my absolute favorite moment of the week, on one of those rainy afternoons, we were watching a movie when she climbed up on my lap and this happened. Only the two of us were at home, so I picked up my cell phone and snapped this selfie.


There is nothing better than spending a quiet couple of hours cuddling your sleeping grandbaby.

On Thursday evening, we drove to Three Rivers and met Katy and Ezra for dinner. Both of the girls were so excited to see each other and June was particularly happy to be back in her Mommy's arms. She was very clingy all through dinner. I don't know if we'll get her to visit alone again any time soon.

She wasn't weepy or upset at all the entire time she was here. The only problem we had all week was getting her to go to bed at night. We finally ended up putting her in her car seat and driving until she fell asleep every night. Some nights it worked quickly and some nights we drove for a long time.

Next week, I'll spend the week at their house to take care of them during the day while Katy works. Travis is going on a canoeing trip. The week after that, Ezra will spend the week with us for her week of Grams Camp. She wants to learn to sew, so I'm working on a project that might be simple enough for a five year old to work on. She's very enthusiastic so I want to make sure we capitalize on that and don't frustrate her. I'll be telling you all about it.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

When I Wasn't Blogging

While I was absent from my blog life went on, I just didn't write it down. Honestly, I feel the need to bring you somewhat up to date.

When I was not blogging, I had a birthday. Not just any birthday, but one of those milestone birthdays. On June 22, I turned 60.


I celebrated with my great-neice, Sway, who turned one the same day. She let me borrow her birthday crown.


Our Little Princesses came to celebrate with both of us. It was so much fun to have them all together for a little party.


As you can see, they had a great time.

Now, there is one more thing I must show you from my own birthday. My husband got me the most hilarious birthday card ever. It looks so innocent and sweet from the outside. Then I opened it and realized that even in his sixties, that 8th grade boy is still alive and well.


I had a great birthday. It was especially nice that Katy, Travis and our Princesses came to celebrate. While they were here, we also went to the beach. There's another blog post coming about that trip.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Independence Day In My Home Town

I have always loved local celebrations of the 4th of July. I love how each community has its own traditions that give Independence Day a local flavor.

When we lived in Texarkana as kids, we would often go to watch the fireworks at the lake. After we moved to Corpus Christi, our parents would load all eight of us into the station wagon and take us to the bayfront, where we would sit along the seawall, and watch the fireworks over Corpus Christi Bay.

When our kids were little, we would take a blanket and a picnic and drive across the bridge to Corpus Christi Beach and watch the fireworks over the bay. They used to fire them from a barge that was anchored in the bay.

Back in the 1990s, we were visiting Patrick's aunt and uncle in Dallas and got to see their neighborhood kids put on their own parade with bicycles, wagons, and pets all decked out in red, white, and blue. The parade culminated in a festival at the park. It was a real taste of Americana.

A few years ago, we went to Boston for the 4th. It was a dream come true. We spent the entire day in the park surrounded by people from all over the United States. And the fireworks were spectacular. Since then, we've gone down to the bayfront to see the local fireworks a couple of times. Now they shoot them off the deck of the USS Lexington Museum on the Bay.

This year, we drove downtown to check out our city's festivities. The City of Corpus Christi's celebration is now called the Mayor's Big Bang Festival. There was a 4th of July Parade along Shoreline Boulevard, FREE Kids Zone, Art Walk, FREE park and ride services, a Harbor Bridge light show and the grand finale… a fireworks display off the USS Lexington!  The parade started at 6 pm and fireworks at 9:30 pm.

We got downtown around 4:30 and everything was already packed and it was 97 degrees. We drove around for a while and checked out several locations. Then we decided to come home. It was just too hot and too crowded.

As we drove down Ocean Drive, we noticed that many of the homes were decorated with flags this year. In case you're not familiar with Corpus Christi, there are many fabulous and stately homes along the bayfront. If you visit, it's definitely a drive you should take.

One of the things that has become a tradition in Corpus Christi is the hanging of large American flags from cranes all over the industrial district. They started displaying them shortly after the September 11th attacks and it's grown every year. This year, they were not only in the industrial district, they were at several construction sites around town.


It is one of the things I like best about the 4th of July in Corpus Christi. Since we decided not to stay for the fireworks, we decided to take pictures of some of the flags. After that, we drove about six miles north to Odem and had dinner at The Railroad Seafood Station. We love their fried shrimp and avocado salad. Then we came home and watched our favorite July 4th movie, Yankee Doodle Dandy. James Cagney is brilliant as George M. Cohan. I've seen it about a million times and it never gets old.

I hope you had a great 4th of July with a celebration of this uniquely American holiday that had a little local flavor.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Let Freedom Ring

Pop-Pop (formerly known as Grandad) and I are heading out to take some pictures of our city's July 4th celebrations. I'm hoping to do a little photo-essay tomorrow. I am the proud owner of a new camera. He got me a Nikon J1 digital camera for my birthday last month and I'm still learning to use it. Wish me luck.


This picture of the Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge was taken at Whataburger Field during the Corpus Christi Symphony's Pops in the Park concert. It was taken with a Samsung Galaxy S-3 phone.