It Was a "Grand" Time!

It was a GRAND time! We spent several days in Topeka with the girls while their parents had a quick getaway. 

This time, there were two lists of instructions: One was for our granddaughters' schedules and activities. The other one was for Summer, the dog. Thankfully, Randy handled most of the dog duties. Other than a brief time when we lost the red collar that's supposed to keep Summer in the yard, we had minimal mishaps. Summer was a good girl and stayed anyway. Whew! That's on Randy. 

But ... oh yeah ... the broken plate is on me. 

Still, Kinley and Brooke got to all their activities and were fed. Summer also survived the week with the novices left in charge.

Before the parents departed, we got to see Brooke's volleyball team in action, led by Coach Jill. This is the third graders' first year playing volleyball. This is also Jill's debut season as coach. They don't keep score. But, the Attack won, I'm sure. It had to be due to the superb coaching, right?

Many of the girls are already serving overhand. Of course, they don't serve from the regulation line and they get two chances to get it over. But, we were still impressed.

Having a team cheer is vitally important to success.

The girls had an early release day on Wednesday, so we went bowling. 

Grandma lost. Of course, they had bumpers and I didn't. But, as I told them, there was a reason I took bowling in college pass-fail. Back in the olden days, we had to take a lifetime sport to graduate. I chose bowling. And I sure didn't want my lack of skill at the bowling alley to affect my GPA. I was bad. And I didn't improve much, even with some input from the instructor.

Then, on Friday, we took Kinley to her tennis lesson. We're always amazed in her improvement. You'll have to take my word for it because the video won't upload, for some reason. And she's one of the younger ones in the class and I sure wasn't going to make her pose for a Grandma photo when she was surrounded by her older friends. That would be a Grandma fail!

It wasn't all sports. Brooke was working on her X6 multiplication facts. And she passed and has moved on to the X7s.

She also got her pet rock decorated and turned in early - just one less thing for Mom and Dad to help with when they got home!

We got to see some of their artwork come home. They did not get their artistic talent from me.

We were proud to clean out book bags and find positive notes from their teachers, too. Brooke was honored for collaboration, going above and beyond and respectfulness during the Friday assembly. I was ready to go and cheer, but I was informed that parents (or grandparents) did not go to these assemblies. And Kinley was recognized for including others and welcoming others to her group. While I'm also a firm believer in working hard on school subjects, those character traits get an A+ from Grandma, too!

While the girls were in school, Randy golfed at three different courses around Topeka. And I read my book.

The first day, we were at Forbes Field.

The second day, we went to Lake Shawnee. Randy survived golfing with three KU fans.

The third day brought chillier weather. Though he'd planned to golf 18 holes at Western Hills, we quit after 9 when it began sprinkling and the wind was blowing.

He thought it was easy to give the "Play Better" advice. It's not as easy to do.

Randy and I needed to be back in Stafford so I could take photos at the ribbon-cutting for renovations and donor recognition for the Nora Larabee Memorial Library during the Oktoberfest celebration. So Uncle Brent and Aunt Susan were the pinch hitters.

I asked Jill yesterday whether we all got good grades from the girls for our role as stand-in parents for the week. We did - Bonus!

While at Oktoberfest on Saturday, we were told (yet again) that farmers aren't supposed to retire. However, if we hadn't retired, we would have been home planting wheat at this time and we wouldn't have gotten to spend the week with the girls. 

Hmmm ... sounds like a good decision to me.