How to survive a day of grandkids

With Mrs Notthat still over in the land of bratwursts and sauerkraut, I ended taking her turn watching the grandkids today. I met them at Stafford Park where Darci has a summer camp thing in the morning. Note the stylish cowboy boots that Riley is wearing.

Riley and I headed home for the morning. While I was looking for paper to make a "Welcome Home" banner for Mrs Notthat and The Boy, Riley sat in Mrs' chair, put on her glasses, and said "I'm Grandma!" Idiot Dog Teddy was not fooled for a minute.

After eating our first lunch, Riley and I headed back to the park to pick up Darci. Once we got home, I put them both in shorts and headed out to the garden. They picked several dozen cherry tomatoes - all of which Darci ate - and a lot of green beans, lemon cucumbers, and of course, lots of massive zucchini.

Note Darci's, umm, interesting hair. She told me this morning she didn't like it, but what she didn't like was the struggle to get it to look like that. Weird Haired Mom strikes again.

We have this sprinkler thing called a Scarecrow. It has a motion detector, and when it detects a critter, grandkid, idiot dog, or forgetful grandpa wander by in front of it, it shoots out water for a few seconds. The kids loved this thing, although they were more interested in getting each other wet than getting themselves wet. Darci was bold enough to try to run by in front of it and dodge the water, but always failed - this thing is really pretty good and managed to frustrate IDT after he accidentally got sprayed a couple of times. It was really hot out (in the 90s) so the water felt good. (Note: the drawback of the Scarecrow is that if it is breezy, the moving leaves can be interpreted as a 5-point buck, causing it to spray water a lot more often than necessary.)

We ate our second lunch and then had ice cream cones.

Darci spent a lot of time explaining her ice cream cone strategy to me. I believe the gist of it is to make it take as long and make as big of a mess as possible. Riley took a somewhat different approach, but got similar results.

After the ice cream had been tortured as much as possible, we headed inside to work on the banner while listening to the soundtrack from Cats (to which Darci knows most of the words).

WHM showed up about an hour early, which thankfully made my tour of duty a bit shorter than expected. It was fun but exhausting. Once I catch my breath I need to get to work straightening up the house. Mrs Notthat called to say she's bringing home a couple of friends with her so we will be having guests.

I hope they like zucchini.

That's it - move along...