Our 8 Year Old Grandson for a Week! Whew….

It’s Camp Nana once again – Nate, our 8 year old grandson is here for a visit and if you know Barb, we have plans! Barb learned how to make the towel critters when we were on our cruise this past January and she put her crafty ability to work again and made critters for Nate’s visit. Nate was all eager to learn and do.  We pick Nate up on Sunday and look forward to doing a number of things with him until his mom & dad pick him up on Saturday.

So,  Monday is a kick back day. We were not sure what his favourite foods were – besides cookies and other sweets so we decided to have a shopping spree that started at the Bulk Barn to give him his sugar fix! The 3 of us planned a loose menu and were off to fill the list of items. We know he likes to help out with the cooking so we planned a meal that we think is kid friendly, Chicken Supreme, one of Nana’s favourites. Back at the rig, Nate & I get started in the kitchen chopping vegetables, stirring sauce and rubbing lemon into the chicken. When we sat down for our excellent meal, we both had all our fingers so it was a good time. We finished off a nice day around Randy & Norma’s camp fire – our site is too small for a camp fire ring.

Nate has an uncanny ability to recognize most cars on the road – I say uncanny because his brother or mom & dad do not openly encourage any interest in car types or brands at home. While driving with Nate, he will call out the name of any car you point out to him. So, our friends Ron & Vicki have a small collection of classic cars that we thought would be of interest so we were off on Tuesday for a visit and to see Ron’s cars. Vicki had arranged a nice surprise by having her 8 year old grand daughter over to meet Nate. The 2 of them hit it off like they were old friends.

We took off for lunch in Ron’s ‘38 Pontiac – yes, a car that can fit all 6 of us comfortably. We went to one of Ron & Vicki’s favourite haunts and the staff treated the kids like royalty. After lunch, we took the kids to the local splash pad at Pinafore Park. After they clambered over the climbing amusements and came away from the splash pad looking like drowned rats, we returned to Ron & Vicki’s for a ride in his 1918 Chevy (490). Back in the day, the model T cost $509 while the Chev was $490 so it was nicknamed the 490.

On our way back to Ron & Vicki’s, we drove by Shaw’s and one can not just drive by Shaw’s without stopping in for a treat! Ron had to jockey some cars around to extricate his 490 out from the  garage. Life must be tough for him as he has to decide which car to drive for which occasion. With the top down, Kimberly and Nate climb into the back seat and Ron takes them for a tour around the yard then up and down the street. It was a great day for all of us.

The next day, we wake up to a gloomy start to the day so it’s a good day for an indoor craft and of course, some Mexican Train. Nate spied Nana’s fabric crayons that she uses for her quilt projects and wanted to ‘play’ with them. So, Barb, ever the planner, decided on a craft project for Nate to draw something on a ‘T’ shirt. Nate is into Skylander Giants video game so he chose one of the characters from the game and they had fun drawing and colouring. What would a trip to Nana’s be if we didn’t bake some cookies – it wouldn’t be right. Still looking like rain, we decided on a movie for the afternoon and saw Despicable Me 2.

Friday, we introduced Nate to Geocaching and he loved it. We gave him a small overview on how to follow the GPS unit and let him take us to a cache. We let him release our travel bug into the first cache we found. Since then, it has been picked up and moved on. We picked 5 caches to find and found all 5. We tried a couple of others that we could not find earlier and still could not find them – even with a little set of eyes that might see those caches that are lower down!

On Saturday, mom & dad came to pick him up, a week seems to go so fast when your having fun. We hope your having fun wherever you are…..