Fun Weekend at Grandma & Grandpa's

Another busy, fun-filled weekend - so many fun things to do in summer!  We ventured over to my parents - we had a special dinner out to celebrate Dad's 60th birthday (Happy Birthday Dad!!!).  An Amish couple near Mom & Dad's does meals in their home (kind of an in-home catering) and we all went there for supper.  Toby and Sarah fixed a wonderful supper, then we enjoyed a campfire and smores by their pond.  Our kids hadn't seen their Carroll cousins for quite a while and to say that they were all wound up to see each other was an understatement!  Glad that Toby & Sarah had a big yard for them all to run around in!!!

We had more fun planned for Sunday too.  After church, we visited my Grandparents, then headed to Five Guys Burgers, a place that Doug highly recommended for lunch.  They did have really good burgers and fries, but I don't want to think about our caloric intake for lunch there!  Then Grandma had all the kids excited to go to Bounce Mania to play in all the bounce houses and slides and so on.  So we enter the building with 5 excited kids, and are then told that there is no Bounce Mania that afternoon - all the rinks are being used for skating and curling, rather than being covered with bouncy things.  So Grandma had to think of something quick:)  Luckily, Putt-Putt was close by and we ventured over there instead.  Half of us golfed and the other half rode go-karts.  I don't have any good go-kart pictures, but it sounded like John and Ava had a GREAT time riding go-karts!  And Blaine had a good time carrying around his ball and golf club - don't think he ever actually hit the ball with the club, but he had fun.

 And we learned that we had better be quick to get to our ball for the next stroke or Blaine may beat us there and claim our ball too!  Remember - he LOVES balls of all kinds!

 Such a cool little fella sitting by the big elephant:)

 The go-kart crew was done before we were so they joined us for the last couple of holes of golf - so Ava did get her wish to actually do both activities.

And Grandma even redeemed herself a bit and took the kids to Dad's company picnic, where she knew they were having a bounce house.  So they did get to bounce anyway in the long run.  Ava and the girls bounced and bounced and bounced.  But Blaine and Cody were more interested in checking out and climbing on all the excavating equipment that they had sitting around.  And I think that Grandpa was pretty tickled to show them the kinds of things that he drives at work everyday.

So we ended the weekend with a couple of pooped out kids!  However, Blaine woke up barking and not breathing well by 1:30.  So John and I spent most of the rest of the night up with him, trying to get him to sleep with us in between his coughing spells.  This is the 4th croupy episode that he has had in the past 6 months and the 2nd one in the summer, so we are headed to see an ENT next week.  Please pray that we find some answers as to why Blaine keeps having recurrent bouts of these episodes.  It is rather scary when he can't breath well and struggles with each breath.  Our pediatrician said they would probably do x-rays and/or an endoscopic exam, so also please pray that any of those procedures may go well - hard to think about some of those things for such a little guy.