A weekend with the grandchildren

Last weekend we were so happy to have our grandchildren stay with us at our cabin. Here's a list of some of the activities we did with them:

• built a fort in the family room with the furniture, some blankets and pillows.
• played board games and card games, like Old Maid, Sequence, Connect Four, Guess Who, and War.
• baked cookies
• made wooden race cars from kits we bought at Michael's. The kits were only $1 each, but they were perfect for our grandchildren...not too many pieces and came with paint and glue. We all worked together to paint the pieces and assemble the cars. Then Craig found a sharpie marker and wrote numbers on the cars (the kids picked out their favorite number) and decorated the cars with stripes, lightning bolts, etc.
• went for a nature hike...we saw hoof prints from deer, as well as places where they had bedded down for the night, we walked on logs, walked on the ice on the lake, saw lots of other animal prints, found walking sticks, etc.
• popped popcorn and watched a movie together
• colored pictures
• did some speed stacking with plastic cups I bought at Target
• made a valentine card
• played with Legos
• made our own french fries and chicken nuggets for supper. The kids helped cut the potatoes using a special french fry cutter. We used our little deep fryer, and everything was delicious!
• we shoveled a pile of snow at the end of the dock and the kids ran down the dock and jumped into the snow. They did cannonballs, belly flops, and even somersaults.

We had other back-up plans, like relay races, a visit to the meat market, and indoor bean bag toss - but we had so much fun doing the other things that we didn't need these. We'll save these ideas for another time.

It was a great weekend. We loved having them at the cabin: talking with them, making things together, singing, laughing, playing, sharing. Being a grandparent is the best thing in the world!