I don’t know any child that doesn’t love going to visit the grandparents. I sure remember going to visit my grandparents when I was a child. My kids are no exception to the rule. They love, and I mean love it when they get to visit grandparents. Unfortunately, one set of grandparents lives half the country away. But that makes it all the more anticipated and special when we do get to visit them.
My kids are quite fortunate in that they got to make two trips to the Nebraska grandparents this last summer. Well the baby didn’t go on the second trip. I only have pictures however from the trip that I went on. They also made a driving trip out with their Nana and stopped by several National Parks and earned their Junior Ranger Badges and then spent two weeks with Nana and Papa without any parents to intervene. That was super special, but since I wasn’t there, I don’t have any pictures of it.
I do have tons of pictures from the trip I made with them though to show what a blast the trip was. So here they go.
Swimming was probably the most favorite activity there. It was hot. Nana and Papa have the coolest pool, you ever saw. Papa is a farmer and he took the bottom rung of a grain bin and sealed off the inside and turned it into a swimming pool. I hear that when my husband was a kid they put a little water in it in the winter and used it for a ice skating rink too, but I’ve never got to experience that use of it.
Zippy honed her skills at swimming under water with snorkel gear.
JD Boy got comfortable with swimming on the surface with snorkel gear, so he’s now rarin’ to go back to Mexico or somewhere tropical.
G’tums just had a blast paddling’ around with the floaties.
Everybody loved swimming except Baby…
She’d rather play in the grass outside the pool…
Or with the kitty…but be careful Baby, not all kitties trust you.
Besides swimming, the kids went for rides on the four-wheeler and in the tractor. We went for walks. We went birding. In fact, here is my daughter’s bird list (along with a couple of mammals) for the trip.
- Eastern kingbird
- Morning Doves
- Killdeer
- Orchard oriole
- Indigo bunting
- Cardinal
- Horned Lark
- Red winged blackbird
- Red headed woodpecker
- Upland sandpiper
- Cormorant
- Pheasant
- Bittern
- Wilson’s snipe
- Yellow-headed blackbird
- Blue-winged teals
- Blue heron
- Meadowlark
- Pied grebe
- Yellow shafted flicker
- Lark sparrow
- Jack Rabbit
- Woodchuck
We also made green salve, my mother-in-laws magic potion that we love for all scrapes, burns, bites, you-name-it. That is a bit of project we learned. We went here and there and gathered buckets of green things, otherwise known as weeds. Some were plants that she cultivated, and some leaves came from trees. That took quite awhile and then we started cooking it down. Which takes quite a long time. It has to simmer…and simmer…and simmer…for a couple of days. But it really is wonderful stuff. It will cure a recluse bite and that proves it’s a magic potion. They have recluses in Nebraska, so having that stuff on hand is quite nice. We don’t have those kinds of spiders where we live, but we have found that it is quite soothing on mosquito bites as well as all the scrapes that my children are regularly coming to show me. They love green salve. I love green salve. And we all love Nana, because now we know how hard she works on it. Well, we loved her before too, but now we know how much to appreciate the green salve that she makes for us.
Now, you’ll have to admit, that any child would like going to the grandparents’ house, if it involved that much fun. No wonder my kids want to move there.
That’s a pretty impressive bird list!! Looks like they all had a great time.