Getting that “Grandma Fix”

The call of Grandma hood is just so strong, sometimes you get a little carried away with plans.  Like..I think I will fly to Kansas, visit for a week, drive to St. Louis bring Amy back to Kansas with me, also collect Taylor and Keaton, wander through the Kansas airport (with dog leashes attached to A & K) get on a plane with them, and bring them to Arizona to stay for a couple of weeks.  What was I thinking!  I remembered by the next morning, why children are sent to young dumb parents, old people are…OLD!   I arrive with traditional dress up gifts in hand, (otherwise they would not be as excited to see me).

Taylor sporting her “Can Can” dress, not the traditional princess dress she usually gets but still fluffy enough to pass muster!

  Keaton’s new obsession is Buzz Lightyear!  For the two months leading up to this trip, every webcam visit we had consisted of..”do you have my buzz costume yet”!  I would so have not been welcome if I had arrived empty handed.

Brody is just happy there is someone else there to feed him…he is wasting away after all!

As a reward for being a good grandma, Calli came through with our traditional crop weekend at the scrapbook store!  Where my 5 weeks of dieting and drinking a gallon of water every day… was destroyed within 30 minutes of temptations…I have NO willpower!

It runs in the family though.

All I could hope for was the stress of creating our masterpiece scrapbook pages and wandering around the scrapbook store was burning off thousands of calories…Right!

Calli, Keaton and I took a road trip to St. Louis where we were meeting…drumroll…The Laudies!  They drove down from Dayton to meet us for the Amy Handoff.  We met at the St. Louis zoo.  Arlon, Jess and I had been there on our recent trip.  I remember thinking how pretty it would be in the spring, and it was partially due to the humidity.  Missouri is a sweaty place!   

 

They had a few “watering holes” for kids throughout the park.  It took K & A a while to get up the nerve to join the other wet rats, but eventually they talked themselves into it…then didn’t want to leave!

 

We checked out the butterflys

The Elephants,

 

The stalactites,

 

The wooly Mammoths…oh wait that's Mikes hair…

 

A few primates

and a few wanna be primates,

and some really big fish,

We ended the day celebrating Matthews 1’st Birthday…Lindsey made cupcakes…I’m sure they looked better before the 90 degree walk through the park but Matthew didn’t seem to care. YUM!

Just a few more…”poses” and it was back to our cars and our separate ways :(