Woke up Wednesday morning in full-fledged teacher mode; this was good as Mrs. M and I had to setup our classrooms at the ranch. Done. Teacher Mode blew into Thursday morning, whereupon a 7 a.m., five-minute-long Pinterest search translated into a complete Bye Bye Summer bash for the punkins. Bam — Pinterest wins again.
Texted the mommies, “your children will be making their own mini-pizzas for lunch today. I’m guessing cheese will be the topping of choice…but if you have anything else to throw on, bring it. Also, keep the top of the driveway clear. Park below the ‘marker'”. Flew through the house — swept a bit, vacuumed a bit, wiped bathrooms; located the sidewalk chalk, verified that I had cheddar, flour and yeast; found the Percy Pigs I’d lost three months ago, muffin tins for paint, and paint brushes; marked off the top of the driveway with chairs and drew an obstacle course.
Cheerios for breakfast, sprinkled liberally with “sprinkles”, began our morning. Have you discovered sprinkles, beyond sugar cookies? No? They’re a staple around here. For cheerios, healthy banana pancakes, sausages, sandwiches and potty treats, they are truly inspirational.
Mom: MoMo, eat your cheerios!
MoMo: (exclaiming quite loudly that he’d rather not)
Oma: How about some sprinkles?
MoMo: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
After breakfast, we hit the obstacle course.
The rules are simple: Start in a big circle. Walk, run, or push the popper along the line; jump with two feet into two small circles, one foot into one small circle; stop inside the triangle and count to the number; twirl in the swirly thingy; step over the rectangles; and stop in the other big circle. I demonstrated twice, Opa at least once. Then, woo hoo! They improved on my specific directions by doing their own thing, together and separately. Once they had to “rescue” Barbies in the final circle. Crawling is optional, but cool.
Time flies when 1) you’re having fun, and 2) when you’re entertaining punkins. Off to the llamas, we reviewed the rules: hold hands on the road! Mo, of course, prefers to drive.
Pizza dough needs an hour to proof. We made two batches because my initial dough lacked bouncy-ness, but in the end ’twas all good. Extra dough just made for playing dough.
He was truly pointing (and yelling) at the dough in my mixer as the dough hook “kneaded” it. Was he trying to tell me that Grammy doesn’t do kneading thataway? Probably. Grammy, you’ve set the bar pretty high.
Lowandbehold, the “proof” setting on my oven does wonders with dough, and in just 40 minutes we were in the pizza-making business. The mommies cut carrots and grapes while their punkins and I cheesed the minis, and Aunty Jenny supervised the whole shebang. Done and done.
I think I’ll be sad when lunch-on-the-deck is a memory.
But! We’ll always have art. Instead of a directed activity, I opted for free-form creativeness. Punkins, along with the Aunty and the Mommy, relished this approach — even Mo, until *ahem* he discovered splatter painting and tried it on Oma, whereupon I quashed his creativity. Aunty and Mommy, however, flourished.
They made me promise to hang their masterpieces on the fridge. Did.
When they tired of art, Opa stepped in with horsie/camel/elephant rides. We calculated that the combined weight of all three was around 90 pounds, which sounds like he needed to be an elephant, but a bystander suggested camels could carry that much poundage, so camel he was. Aunty’s video is so much more entertaining, but you get the idea.
Finally, nap time rolled around, and while none of us would admit that it is the favorite part of a Thursday, we know you know how it goes.
So, goodbye, summer. You were good, of course, but we’ve got fewer daylight hours, nippy afternoon air, and high expectations of autumn colors and the letter “A”. See you next year.