39 Weeks and Counting

 For the last few weeks, I have had my family in town to help me as we gear up for John to arrive.  To be honest, I was a little concerned that there wouldn't be enough to do around our house to warrant having people here.  But, it's amazing how luxurious it is to just leave the house without wrangling kids or escape to your room for a quiet nap.  Although, I joke that my kids get spoiled with all of the extra attention from grandparents and aunts, really I'm the one who will have to go through the more painful withdrawal.  Don't worry, I will tell you all about my rehab!

But, anyway, I do want to take this opportunity to write about the weeks that Nana and L'Opa were in town.  Luckily, we were able to give them a little bit warmer weather than they have been experiencing in Kansas.  We even made it to the beach one day.  The kids got wet (Molly just plopped down in the water), but the adults stayed a safer distance from the water.

However, mainly we stuck close to home.   In the above picture, Nana is working on one of her alphabet quilts.  This particular one is for Margaret and she still has Oscar's to start and complete before she will get to John's.  She is coming up on 10 years of constantly having a baby quilt to work on.  Molly and Will were so intrigued.  And maybe she would get these done a little quicker if Will was always there to remind her to not sit idly.   She would have just sat down and he would immediately pounce on her to get to work.   Both Will and Molly would bring out their quilts and compare the colors and were constantly amazed at the similarities.

While all of that was going on, Dom and L'Opa watched every game of the NCAA tournament that they could.  Though we have watched this tournament for a number of years, I am pretty sure I have never watched more games.  Dom is such a huge fan.  He was constantly checking his bracket and filling in the winners.  He also decided his lucky seat was on L'Opa's lap.  He only left it to go shoot hoops in his room or at the end of the KU game a couple of weeks ago to be comforted by his mom.  It has been so fun to watch this year's tournament with him.  Even if it was particularly difficult to get him to do school work for the first two days of the tourney...

 Though, luckily, Nana had to deal with that more than me.  She took over his schooling for the duration of her stay.  He said he liked having her help him more than me because she didn't yell...ahem.  (You know, I wouldn't have to yell so much if he wouldn't say that math was 'boring').   But, it was neat to see them work together.  Particularly when Nana immediately recognized his reader as the same one she used to learn to read.   Some of the characters have changed and they've added a couple of stories, but for the most part it is a very traditional Catholic reader. 

 When Will was showing such an interest in Nana's sewing, I dug out his 'sewing'.  He was quite diligent about getting his yarn around the shape twice.  If he didn't quite make it, he would pull it all out and do it again.  I wish I had taken video of this particular episode as they were both sitting there sewing and he was just talking and talking and talking.  Probably like any sewing circle.  I should have provided some tea and cookies.

Will also bonded with L'Opa over German lessons.  He learned a few key phrases that he will throw out on occasion.  Alles Klar! (OK), Guten Morgen (Good Morning!), and Tschuss! (Bye!) are his favorites.  I even heard him teaching the neighbor girl these phrases and Molly is always a willing student.  L'Opa left behind some phrase sheets and I'm hoping to have Mitzi copy them to poster board, laminate them, and then have them for placemats.  Schaumamoi! (We'll See, in the Bavarian Dialect).

Nana also brought Molly a princess cookbook that the boys loved to look through as well.  They were so intrigued that we found some more boyish cookbooks on Amazon and purchased them as well.  They made several recipes out of them and enjoyed eating all of them.  Nana also made a delicious chocolate cake and several meals for us during her stay.  We were generally exhausted by the end of the day.

 Nana and Mitzi overlapped by one day.  We've stuck close to home for the last few days as it is getting a little harder for me to move around and it has also been so beautiful out that we spend a lot of time outdoors.  In costume...

 This morning we had donuts and it is going to be a wonderful day.  Mitzi taught Molly to do a back flip, I'm going to do laundry, we are going to tidy up the house, head to Mass, and then watch the final four.  Come on Wisconsin!  I will post about Dom's decor tomorrow!