Camp Nana

My mom had asked that she get to spend some time with the boys while we were visiting Washington, without the annoying presence of their parents. :) So while we were up in Everett staying with the Browns and Shevitz so Adam could be closer to work, my mom took the boys away for some quality time. Papa was included in the fun, but since he had to work through most of it (my mom is mostly off work during the summer), it was my mom who planned and executed all the adventures. And the boys had such a great time with Nana doing all her very cool activities that we started calling the time the boys had at my parents' house "Camp Nana."

First up was Luke's turn. Because Luke is younger, he can't, and doesn't want to, do some of the bigger boy stuff, so we thought he'd have more fun just having some one-on-one time with Nana and Papa. Plus, that would give the bigger boys a chance to do some bigger boy stuff when it was their turn. For the second half of the time we were watching Max and Hannah, Luke went down to Issaquah to stay for a couple of nights.

Luke and my mom mostly played and relaxed at the house. Even though the kids are only at their house about a week out of the year, my mom makes her home incredibly kid-friendly. There are "Nana's house" toys and books. The backyard is perfect for exploring. There is a sandbox and plenty of tiny dinosaur and lizard figurines to play with in the sand, and you know Luke loves those. And because it got nice and hot while he was visiting, my mom filled an inflatable boat with water so Luke could cool off.

The first night he was there, Luke had a hard time sleeping; he was a little afraid. The picture with my mom and Luke sleeping was taken by my dad in the morning. Nana ended up falling asleep on the hard floor next to him after getting up to comfort him numerous times. She has no blankets, only Luke's sheet, and Luke's leg is on her arm, but he finally slept...until 11:30am the next day when my mom had to wake him up because he was still sawing logs!

They did get out once and saw Toy Story 3, which had "two scary parts" according to Luke, but other than that he really liked it. He loved the quiet pace of life at Nana and Papa's. And of course he loved being doted on all by himself. And my parents had a great time too. It's always so fun to have the kids one at a time, you can really see their unique and special little (or big!) personalities really shine when they are solo.
The next week the big boys got a turn too. Nana picked them up from Everett and off they went to Camp Nana! She bought them clip boards and sketching pencils and they went out to capture nature through art. Then they came in to watercolor their masterpieces. My dad's garden is stocked full of beautiful flowers, so they had plenty of subjects to choose from. They also found a paper airplane book in my mom's car and spent most of the three days they were with her building various styles of paper airplanes and flying them down the driveway and off the balcony. Zach made some arrows and came up with a rubber band launch technique.

Nana took them to see both Despicable Me and How To Tame Your Dragon at the theater. All three liked How To Tame Your Dragon the best, but still said they loved Despicable Me. It was a tough choice, but it's hard for evil villains to compete with ferocious dragons.

They spent hours in my parents' hot tub, invented games in the tree house, played with every single toy my mom has in her arsenal, went digging for fossils in the fossil beds down the street from the house, explored the beautiful backyard; basically they had more fun than they could have at any regular old camp because with all the fun at Camp Nana comes with a lot of love and thoughtfulness poured in. Thank goodness they have a grandmother like their Nana! What lucky boys they are.