My Grand Weekend

I did end up spending this past weekend alone with our oldest grandson, Gaige, in West Virginia. Hubby was down with the same bug I had last week (which is STILL lingering in both of us by the way) and was really not up to that sort of outing. So Gaige and I loaded the dogs into the truck and off we went. We missed having Hubby around, of course, but we managed to have a bit of fun anyway.

As you can probably imagine, I took a few pictures.

Gaige is a bit of a character, so we shared quite a few laughs over the weekend. Starting with our visit to Target in Winchester, Virginia. He’d outgrown his bicycle helmet, so we stopped to buy one for him. He was super-excited about the cool helmet I let him pick out and insisted on wearing it as soon as the cashier finished scanning the thing, cardboard tag and all. Can you tell how excited he was?

Saturday dawned bright and early, thanks to my crazy dogs. Gaige watched The Wizard of OZ while I woke up. Then we took the dogs for a walk. We turned that everyday dog walk into a hiking adventure.

Gaige is a very active 7-year-old boy. He climbs on pretty much everything. He was super-excited to get a chance to do some mountain climbing.

I’m not sure what he enjoyed more, going up or coming back down…

He would’ve gone up and down that thing all day if I’d let him.

When he wasn’t climbing, he was running.

He was quite tickled to discover one, lone dandelion seed head that was just screaming to be picked.

As we were heading back to the house, we got to a spot where the hill is VERY steep. Note how steep in the picture above. It only got worse higher up. I decided to back-track a bit and take the easier route. Gaige, of course, wanted to scale the steepest spot. And he wanted to make it a race. Knowing how steep that hill is, I knew I’d beat him.

I was wrong. I wasn’t going slow or anything. He just went really fast, which is why he’s gasping for breath in that photo above. Look behind him and you can see how steep and BIG the hill is.

I did say he climbed pretty much everything there was to climb, right? This downed tree, which he referred to as broken, was no exception.

Gaige really likes Belle and she likes him right back. Belle’s first family, who she lived with from 8 weeks to 18 months of age,  had a couple of kids. So she actually likes hanging out with Gaige.

After our hiking adventure, I opened the back of the truck to load my bike. Belle, not wanting to get left behind (note the sad puppy expression on her face), hopped right in and immediately made herself comfortable. Gaige thought it would be fun to hang out there with her.

I couldn’t resist including this cow picture. It was the first critter we encountered along the C&O Canal bike path.

Gaige very obediently rode through as many puddles as he could, just like I instructed. Until he went through one that was particularly long and deep and got soaked.

He really likes his new helmet.

Riding through all of those puddles made him a little dirty.

Gaige’s new favorite movie is Dante’s Peak (I love disaster flicks). He watched it on Sunday morning, with Belle, while I straightened the place up.

Later in the morning, he and I explored the yard a bit. There’s no shortage of stuff to climb on back there, that’s for sure.

He really had a good time letting loose over the weekend. Yes, there were a number of pictures where I made him smile for the camera, but there were also lots of candid smile shots like this one, too.

I’m posting this last picture against my better judgment (I am in DESPERATE need of a haircut). I had to get a shot of the two of us together after our fun weekend.

We need to take him back out there soon so we can build a tree fort. I wanted to do that this past weekend, but I didn’t have the proper tools with me. Next time, I’ll be more prepared.