Snake in the Gutter

Seems like an ordinary front walkway, right?

No---this is the site of a recent and infamous bout of Snake in the Gutter!  

Remember playing this game on a sidewalk in front of your house growing up?
One player...the Snake...guards the walkway (the Gutter)...

while the other players run back and forth across the Gutter, trying not to get tagged by the Snake (or maybe hoping to get tagged and become the Snake).   

A stick goes across the Gutter so the players don't get too close to the road.

All that running makes everybody blurry.

G doesn't last too long as a player, either.
Can't be perfectly sure that all players in this case totally understood--

but "a good time was had by all" anyway.   

Just one more game to play at G's house.

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. 
       Psalm 127:3

A Visit to Crocodile Forest

To look at this stretch of woods, you would never know what was within all that green.

“Where are we going to go today, Mommy?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Noah. Where do you want to go today?”
“Hmmmm,” I thought for a minute. “I know! Let’s go to the Crocodile Forest. That might be fun!”
“Well, let’s wake your sister up and get dressed, and we will go.”
“Can we wear our boots, Mommy?”
“Absolutely,” Mommy told me.
After we were all dressed and had our boots on, we took the walk through the soybean field to Crocodile Forest.  

It is called Crocodile Forest because my Daddy says he saw a crocodile in it one day. I’ve always wanted to see a crocodile, but Mommy says I can never ever touch one. Crocodiles can be kind of grumpy.

We found the little path that went into Crocodile Forest, and Mommy held our hands. The trees were so pretty. Their leaves were yellow, orange and brown.
Then we heard leaves crunching behind us.
“What’s that noise, Mommy?”   

“I don’t know, Noah. Let’s be quiet and listen.”
The noise was getting closer. A big pile of leaves was moving. It sounded like something was coming right to us. Maybe it’s the Crocodile. It must be the Crocodile!
It’s getting closer, closer!
Out came a...turtle.

It’s just a turtle hiding in the leaves.
Whew! That was close.
Mommy lets us play on some big trees that have fallen down, and we pretend we are trains crossing the tracks.Then we hear another noise.

“Shhh!! What’s that noise?” Mommy asks.
We listened carefully. The noise was coming from under the ferns.
It made a Squish Squash sound.
The noise got louder, louder.

Out came a…snail!
Whew! It is only a silly snail, not that grumpy crocodile.
Next Mommy took us to skip rocks on the pond. She showed us how to throw them so they would skip on top of the water.  

Just as Laurel was getting ready to try, we saw something in the water.
It was long and dark brown. Bubbles were coming up from around it.
“Mommy, Mommy, I see it! It MUST be the crocodile. It’s swimming in the pond. We have to get out of here!”
Just then out of the water came a…log.  

Just a plain brown log. Not a grumpy crocodile.
“Come on, children,” Mommy said. “It’s time to go home and have a snack.”
“OK, Mommy. But can we come back to Crocodile Forest tomorrow? Maybe then we’ll finally get to see the crocodile.”

By MWD

Crocodile Forest...a magic place not far from G's house...never mind that it really was once an irrigation pond. Never mind that it might not really have a crocodile in residence. At least we've never seen one...yet. 

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. 
       Psalm 127:3

Hanging out a G's house

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. 
       Psalm 127:3

Once upon a What??

So G loves fairy tales, and was one day telling her captive audience, Gunner and Duncan, about the Three Little Pigs. 

http://www.read.gov/books/pageturner/
2003juv81093/#page/2/mode/2up

 

You know the story...there were these 3 pigs and a Big Bad Wolf,  and the first pig built his house out of straw which the wolf immediately blew down, etc. etc. 

Great story with the moral of "Don't take any shortcuts when building a wolf-proof house" or something like that.

 

Duncan got into the story, helped G tell it ("I'll huff and I'll puff..."), and loved it. 

This motivated G, and she de-terrorized the story by having each little pig move in with the next when his house was destroyed by the wolf until the little pig in the brick house takes care of the wolf for good. (In G's version, that translates as "The wolf climbs down the chimney of the brick house and catches his tail on fire, which propels him back up the chimney, and he runs away to put out his tail in the ocean.")  Nobody dies in G's version.

Telling fairy tales, one child beside her and one child on her lap...a classic scene in the proverbial Granny and Grandchild playbook! Balm to a Granny's heart.

[Gunner tolerated the first story about the pigs, but part way into the next story said he was going upstairs to play with the trains and off he went.]

And G, having a captive audience in Duncan proceeded to tell the next tale about the little boy who lost his new clothes to the tigers in the jungle.

Fast forward to about 3 days later. G gets a text from the children's mother... 

"So, Duncan just told us a story of 3 little birds. One built his house with wood. One built his house with binoculars and one with cups. Random. The other story was 3 dinosaurs who ran to the house made of grass and the wolf got his head caught in the grass when he tried to eat them because the grass was sticky with suckers. Then the dinosaurs all grabbed guns and shot him."

OK, not sure what the morals of these stories are, but I like his versions better.

  Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. 
       Psalm 127:3 

The "Little" Trains

What is it about trains that little boys like so much? Well, they're "gasheens," to start with, and that makes them interesting.
But why do grannies like trains?  That's easy. Because their little boys like them...

G had never heard of Thomas the Tank Engine before Noni came along. But it wasn't long before she was turning his battery powered car into Thomas. 

this wasn't it but it may have started with a
decoration from a 3rd birthday and a cardboard box

Things progressed from there,
and with the help of Granddaddy, G moved on to making her first "little train" track--a piece of plywood, some track, paint and a bit of imagination--it's portable, personal and on its second set of grandboys.

G's House

Noni's House

Granddaddy's Barn

Granddaddy's Tractor

The Pond

Dreaded "pyre" ants!

Iron Horse Farm Horse Barn

Horse (by Rachael)

G didn't stop there. The competition was on with our fav train store (Tom's Trains...alas, no longer with us.*). Remember going there? They had this little hand's on set up in the back to lure in the grannies...er children that looked sort of like this...

Well, the lure worked and G came home with a box set, and now Granddaddy had to cut some more plywood, etc. etc., and he's the one who had to set it up, of course, and bolt it to a table.

But G got to paint it and add some homemade structures (tobacco barn, hotel, motel) and a whole lot of thrift store finds. Some look a bit strange but...oh well.

So now G has trains in her upstairs hall and trains in Martha Wren's old bedroom and we might have just bought 12 hours of steam train DVD's at the Salvation Army Thrift in Myrtle Beach (Granddaddy's find).  Anybody know if the Norfolk & Southern RR is for sale?

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord.
Psalm 127:3

(*but visit Tom's Trains now at http://www.tomsmodeltrains.net/)