Afterwards we headed over to field day at the town High School, which offered such kiddie entertainment as a bouncy house, various field games, and live music. Julia and Madeleine were literally jumping for joy in the bouncy house:
When their turn was up, the girls exited the bouncy house in complete accordance with their personalities; that is, Julia immediately and obediently, and Madeleine not at all. As we held up the entire line of children waiting to get in the house next, Yia-yia and I called for Madeleine to come to the little door so we could pull her out, while Madeleine had a better idea: she had the whole bouncy house to herself, so why on earth would she come out? She ran around in dizzying circles, completely ignoring our pleas, then commands, then very stern commands to come out. I had the pleasure of squeezing my adult-sized body through the child-sized "door" (really just a flapping opening in the netting) and flopping myself around the bouncy interior chasing her until I was able to grab her and pull her back out the door. She sat, completely unphased, in her time-out on one of the yard lines of the high school field while I apologized to all the families waiting their turn in line.
Following the bouncy house, the girls danced to some of the live music, then we all sat down to cool off with Italian Ices. I hadn't ordered one for Madeleine, figuring we could all share with her and she'd never consume a whole ice herself, but all it took was one sip of Auntie Caitlyn's and she was hooked:
"Mmmm!" she squealed. "So yummy!" Then, deciding she was privy to the entirety of Caitlyn's ice, she began asking, "So yummy? Ogaime? Aunt so yummy?" Before long, I had given her the rest of my ice, and she plopped herself down to devour it:
We finished the day off with dinner out, followed by ice cream at the town center green.
Madeleine did quite well spoon-feeding herself, although at one point she had pretty much the entire scoop of ice cream on her spoon, exclaiming to Auntie Caitlyn, "Oh my! It's GORGEOUS!" The amusement she generated with this comment was enough to inspire her to declare that each subsequent scoop was also GORGEOUS.
Once the ice creams were finished, the girls spent some time running and galloping around the green, with Madeleine occasionally running over to one of the old historic murals to point out Uncle Mike to the rest of us:
"It's a Uncle MIKE!"
Whether the Uncle Mike she thought she saw was the real Uncle Mike, or instead either Uncle Dave or Gramps was not clear. However, she was inconsistent on which historic band member was Uncle Mike each time she pointed him out, so I suppose it's possible she thought she saw all three.
It was a fun-filled family weekend. I have some really fond memories and the girls were absolutely GREAT! Love, Yiayia
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