We met Shane and Mike in Greensboro, NC, on Good Friday afternoon, April 2. Unfortunately, Shane and Mike still had very long hair. I brought a big pair of scissors in the van with us, so when Shane asked for things, I kindly agreed to give him the requested items in return for snips of his hair. He's pretty shrewd and would not trade for gum. By the time we got back to our house at 7:30 pm that evening, Shane finally had some bangs, which was an improvement, but his hair still reminded me of Shirley Temple's. Of course, Shane asked for Cole to spend the night. That cost him another lock of hair. Two bedtime extensions cost 2 more locks of hair. But I soon realized that Shane has such mega thick, voluminous hair that I'd be cutting small locks of hair all week if I didn't stop the negotiations. So I told Shane that I would only negotiate for a full hair cut. I save one of the locks of hair in a baggie, but forgot to give it to you, Mike.
Saturday morning, Kathleen picked up Shane, Cole and me to take us with her and the girls to an Easter Extravaganza at a nearby church. It was a beautiful super sunny day and Kathleen got pretty sunburned, but the rest of us were okay. Shane never seems to sunburn since he has olive toned skin, like a good Italian. The kids got free snow cones, free lunch, jumped in bouncy houses/slides, did crafts and played carnival type games, but unfortunately Shane and Cole missed the call for the egg hunt for their age group. Win some, loose some. The boys didn't seem to mind too much. It's not like we don't have an gianormous amount of candy and sweets at our house. While we were at the Easter Extravaganza, Tim picked up lunch (ham and green beans) from Henry's Smokehouse since we planned to just pick up fast food on the way home from church on Easter Sunday.
Easter Sunday morning, we all went to Sunday school and outdoor church. Cole and Shane enjoyed the Easter egg hunt on the playground at our church. I co-taught the 4, 5 and 6 year olds' class (including Tenley and Evie) and they also had an Easter egg hunt in the courtyard at church. Kathleen was a super great help with the egg hunt. Then we all walked across the street for the outdoor church service. They had it outdoors to be safer and more able to socially distance since Christmas and Easter always bring tons of extra people. The kids stayed for the singing part and Children's message, before Stu walked them to a nearby playground for the sermon. I was super proud of Kathleen's kids for going up with Shane to the front with the other kids for the Children's message since there were hundreds of people there since it was Easter. Shane just grabbed the girls' hands and said "Come on!". Evie took her hand back, but went with him and Tenley and Cole followed them up. The children's pastor always lets the kids pick a piece of candy after her message and they were happy for that. Kathleen stayed for a good part of the service and then went to help Stu chaperone the kids on the playground. After Pop, Aunt Dot and I watched the rest of the church service, we drove across the parking lot to the playground to pick up the 4 kids, Stu and Kathleen up drive Stu and Kathleen to their vehicles across the street. Then the 4 kids rode with Tim, Aunt Dot and I took pick up lunch to go from Cookout. We had an Easter egg hunt here at our house after lunch, with each of the 4 kids getting to find 15 plastic Easter eggs with candy in them. They each had their own room to find their specific eggs in.
Gosh, Mike, blogging takes a lot of time. Who knows what we did the rest of Spring break. Maybe I'll write more tomorrow, but no promises. Indy wants to go for a walk. I do remember that Cole spent about every other night here with Shane. The boys were together practically non-stop the whole 11 or 12 days. And the girls were often playing with them, either here or at Kathleen's house. They climbed trees, shot nerf guns, went to several playgrounds, gymnastics, Big Air trampoline park, rode ziplines, played so many games, decorated Easter cookies, etc.. and ate tons of fast food. Shane weighed 69.8 on December 15. If you weigh him now, I bet he's gained. I gave him several pair of size 10 blue jeans in probably December and I noticed the other day that the jeans already look a bit short on him. We think he will end up being taller than you, Mike, someday.
One thing I remember is that for the required foreign language training, one or two days, Shane did Spanish with Cole. But usually he did Japanese.
Pop provided some more tidbits the following day:
* Cole spent the night Friday, Sunday, Tuesday and Saturday. We don't do 2 nights in a row to try and make sure the boys don't get too much of each other and that Cole doesn't get too tired. And we wanted Cole to stay home some nights when Stu's parents were around (Wednesday thru Friday nights).
* Shane walked up to the front of the church on Easter (lots of people outside) and held Tenley's hand. He tried to also hold Evie's hand but she didn't want to. It was amazing that Evie went up to the front with all those people watching her. I don't think she would have done it without Shane.
* Wednesday morning, Kathleen took the 4 kids to a gymnastics place near their house. They let kids up to 10 years old come and play for an hour for only $6 each. It was almost empty and the kids had a great time. They like the foam pit the most.
* On Thursday morning, Stu took the kids to a playground. Then Nana and Pop took them to Big Air trampoline place. They had a lot of fun.
* On Friday, Shane got his hair cut. Big Air for everyone +$10 cash was the incentive it took to get the haircut. Nana said she wanted something military like and the stylist asked Shane if he wanted the top longer so he could play around with it. Of course, Shane did. After the haircut, we had another kid from church come over plus Cole and the three of them went to a new playground that had these zip wires. There were several short ones and one long one. The kids liked the zip wires and the other things on the playground. The zip wires were all ground level. You didn't need to climb anything or wear any safety gear.
* On maybe Thursday evening, there was a tornado watch for Spartanburg which is about 30 miles from where we live. When Shane heard about it, he asked if we could go there. When Nana said no, Shane expressed his disappointment with a groan.
* The girls think it is so unfair that Cole gets to spend the night at our house with Shane and stays over at our house more. We sometimes pick Cole up by parking in Kathleen's driveway and texting Kathleen to send Cole out so the girls don't know he is leaving!
Nana texted me a story about Shane 'discovering' sand dollars for the first time at her friend's house. She had some on the table and Shane noticed them while he was helping with the cat pots. Nana's friend let Shane take some home. He put them in his pocket, forgot all about them, and then got a quick reminder the next time he sat down!
There are more Shane pictures and tales in the Easter post for this year! Thank you, Nana, for writing up something for me to post! I saved one small story from what she wrote that I've yet to reveal!
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