A week with the grandkids

My daughter and son-in-law went on vacation to celebrate their 10th anniversary. The island of St. Lucia was their destination, found in the Caribbean, wonderfully warm but not too hot, slower pace of life and a place to relax for a week. In the meantime, Grandpa and I were in charge of the 5 year old kindergarten boy, Z, and the 2 year old (remember I said 2 years old) girl, M. While Mom and Dad were off on their adventure, as the grands called their parents trip, we had our own adventure with the grandkids.
We have been staying with them the whole time we've been here and we frequently visited before our move here so we all knew each other fairly well. While the grands missed their parents, they didn't have any qualms about us being in charge. We just had the normal 5 year old active boy and 2 year old girl issues to deal with but we were up for the challenge. I have to admit that age and time have caught up to me...it was easier to deal with 2 kids this age when I was younger however I do have the advantage of retirement on my side. My only "job" for the whole week was to deal with the children, we didn't have to go to a job outside the home, both Mr UAW and I could tag team all day long. The only hard part was when Mr UAW got a cold/fever for a few days. In that case I felt like I had 3 kids to take care of, but he was better for our adventures with the grands.
Our adventures turned out to be visiting the air/space museum one weekend. This was a big deal to our grandson. He was pretty excited. I think he liked the space side more than the airplane side. And a special note on the space side, we got to see some of the rocket engines that Mr UAW worked on when he was a tool designer at an aerospace company, and we got to see the space module that was picked up by a navy ship that Mr. UAW served on. On the airplane side, Z liked the B-17 bomber and the Spruce Goose.
The following weekend we spent the day at the ocean. We went to a lighthouse and Z got to climb up to the top with Grandpa. M and I stayed down as she was under the height limit to climb to the top. We went to the Tilamook Cheese Factory and of course you have to have ice cream there. And then it was off to the beach, where Z could run around like a wild 5 year old boy and M could experience waves licking her toes. Our trip to the beach was completed with an outing to a local fish and chips place. Needless to say, we had sleepy kids on the way home.
So we all more than survived our week. One of our final activities was to make a welcome home sign for Mom and Dad. We picked up the parents at the airport and enjoyed hearing about their trip.
This summer we have many adventures planned, some just Mr UAW and myself, some with just the family dog, some with one or both grandkids and some with the whole family. You'll have to check in to hear about the other ones.