what's cooking?

Yesterday was a special day!  Jackson's school was having another day off.  Honestly, I've never seen a school district with this many student-less days.  When I was teaching we had to do our "extra" classes after school, but that's another story.

So, while the older grands went off with Sarah for a weekend in San Diego, Jackson and I got to spend the entire day together!

It started off pretty early.  Adam dropped him off at 8 a.m..  Now that it's fall, we didn't have to worry about it getting too hot before 9 in the morning.  Jackson didn't eat too much breakfast at home, but saw grandpa was home-he decided to eat a second breakfast with us.

Grandpa had asked for eggs with cheese, bacon and toast.  Jackson told me his favorite was "eggs with cheese, I always eat them like that grandma.  I also want bacon and toast with grandpa."

Knowing that my youngest grandson doesn't like the cheese in his eggs, I made a quick double check.  Sure enough he told me, "No, I don't want cheese in my eggs!"  He also loved that we had cream cheese with mixed berries.  He wanted jam on the top of it.  Hey, I buy "fruit only" jam, so all was good.  I had made myself some overnight brownie oatmeal.  We all had some raspberries to go with it.

No worries about his lack of breakfast at home (which turned out to be milk, a small pancake and a whole banana), he ate every bit of what I made.  LOL!

Then we hooked up the pups (I had to miss water class and the girls really needed an outing since most of our week was quite rainy) and went for a walk.  Jackson spied a hummingbird, some leftover prickly pears, a few bunnies and lots of neighbors who were also enjoying the sunny, warm and dry morning.

Once the girls were tired, we packed up a snack for Jackson and some water and went to the "big" park.  Honestly, I was expecting a lot of kids there since there wasn't school, but except for a few minutes we had the whole play area to ourselves.

We spent most of our time on the teeter totter.  Jackson loves the teeter totter.  After about 25 minutes, grandma was feeling a tad bit green and having a silent wish that her skeletal system weren't quite so precarious.  After eating some snack we went back to the house.

The day before we had gone to the dollar store when Jackson picked out some big chalks for Bryce, a motorcycle toy for himself and a bag of brownie mix for us to make together on our special day.  This was our special day and with very little help from me, Jackson made the batter.  While I slipped the pan into the oven.

It's very hard to be 5 and have to wait for the brownies to bake and then another hour to have them cool down enough to frost them.  But we did it.  We read several books, practiced some sight words and even tried to put together one of his cousins super hero jigsaw puzzles.

At last the brownies could be frosted!  Jackson did a great job and enjoyed eating his masterpiece!

By then, we were both in need a rest (grandma more so than Jackson).  We watched The Greatest Showman and cuddled with the fur babies.

Before we knew it Mom and Bryce arrived and it was time for Jackson to join his nuclear family and go to the gym.

I sent him home with most of his creation to share with his sister.  (Mom and Dad are in training for an event)  It was a wonderful day and a blessing!