Grandparents' Day

Ahh, a relaxing Friday evening. Hubby and I stepped out of our routine today. We drove to Blue Springs and spent quite a bit of our day at Cordill Mason Elementary School – it was Grandparents' Day!

A year ago we promised we would attend Miss Cayley's next Grandparents' Day. We made son and his wife promise to let us know in plenty of time so we could take off work and be with her. Hmmm – something didn't work out as planned.

Turns out, we have all the time in the world to be grandparents – and we're loving it! We had our usual morning routine, then headed out mid-morning. Cordill Mason is a large K-5 school in south Blue Springs – Cayley says there's around 700 students. Even though we were early, parking was a real challenge. There's a church across the street that shares its parking lot, and we were parked in the very back of the church lot........about two cars down from Cayley's other grandparents.

I think she felt quite special to have two sets of grandparents in attendance. Older daughter's in-laws were there, as well, because of a granddaughter in 4^th grade. We felt quite connected! We sat in on part of the third grade math class, enjoyed Library time with them. Cayley's quite adept at using the Library's search computer to find books. We had a little more time in her classroom, then it was lunchtime.

Remember lunchtime? It was never like this at our school! We stood in line and picked up our styrofoam trays........I don't know if that's normal, or special for this heavy-duty day. We got rigatoni with meat sauce, bread, bean salad, and frozen blue raspberry sorbet, as well as our milk. We were thrilled to realize the school picked up the tab for our lunch......which we ate at picnic-type tables. Those things are NOT made for grandparents with bad knees!!

After lunch, Cayley took us all to the Book Fair. I don't know who decided to hold the Book Fair on Grandparents' Day, but they're absolutely brilliant! Can you imagine all these kids finding the “perfect” books with their grandparents in tow? Miss Cayley came away with three books. The cost was, surprisingly, much more than the $2 she'd brought with her!! :)

Then it was time for pictures. We figured the $5 for two photos wasn't bad, so we had our photos taken with her. It will be a fun memento. We finally headed back to the classroom. There were some final weekend reminders, then all grandparents who wanted to take their grandkids with them could sign out and leave. Luckily, Cayley's other grandparents had other plans. So we signed her out and took her home – and that, believe me, was easier said than done. Son forgot to tell daughter-in-law that we were coming up, and she'd filled out the early release form with her dad and stepmom's names! I pulled out my drivers license, as requested, and the office gal called son and verified it was okay to send Cayley out with us. I'm seriously glad they take those precautions.

We enjoyed visiting with son and his wife – and their menagerie. It was our first time meeting face to face with their chihuahua-yorkie mix, their african gray parrot........and the 100+ pound English bulldog. She's like a big elephant who wants to be loved! I knew she was big, but it was different seeing her in person. The chihuahua who has never liked me before decided to sit on my lap and let me rub his ears....he did stand up and growl at me once, but then we came to an understanding and I rubbed his ears while he was quiet.

The star of the show is the african gray parrot – it talks and performs with coaxing......it was hilarious to hear son and wife pretending they were calling the 15-year-old son, then hearing the parrot say “what?!” “C'mere!”.

It was a good day and a good visit – we headed home after the 15-year-old got home from school so we could get a hug from him. I think we made the 8-year-old very happy.