Grandparents Visit

My parents drove up for a visit last Tuesday. So when we arrived home from Silas's gym class (little plastic scooters!) there were ducks in the garage. 2 blue swedes, a buff, and a Cayuga. The first order of business for the visit was building housing for this small flock, but more about that later (ie. I don't have pictures taken yet to accompany a post).
Silas was more excited about seeing Grandma and Grandpa than the ducks anyway. The first night we ate left over pizza and played with the knock hockey game they made and brought.
Wednesday night Mom took Silas to the Childrens Theater for a musical performance of The Gruffalo. That's Mom and Silas getting ready for their "date" in matching red outfits. Orrin even chauffeured them down so Silas wouldn't be traumatized by Grandma losing her cool in Minneapolis traffic.
Emmet was missing out on all the primping and preparations, so when we moved everything out of Silas's room so we could paint, he took advantage of the room configuration to climb up and get into the bag of nail files and trimmers and paints.
Dad set up the knitting machine that Mom purchased a couple years ago and one of these days someone in the family will figure out how to use. Right now all the dials and knobs and sliding bench are being used only to occupy Silas and Emmet. Silas keeps claiming to be kntting me a sweater, but I've yet to see it materialize.
We cooked a pot roast in the pressure cooker. My first attempt at pressure cooking anything. It tasted really good, but may have been poisoned because Dad was really sick the rest of the visit. (Before I scare anyone off from visiting us though, we were sick a couple weeks ago, and Mom was sick before the pot roast.)
So while Dad recuperated, Mom and I decorated a fish lamp for Silas's room and chose paint colors and design.
When we first moved into the house we gave Silas a choice between the two rooms. His old room, which we had painted as a nursery in green and yellow with Humphrey on the walls, or the other room, the only room in the house we hadn't painted with Pepto Bismol pink walls. He chose the pink room. A pink room was fine by him, but the lampshade on his bedside lamp, with the brown beads on it? Now, that had to go. A trip to Ikea yielded a new light fixture, a new lamp, a new hamper, and a theme for the room: nautical/ocean.
He already had a stellar sailboat quilt courtesy of Great Aunt Susan and Grandma Lise, so it was a logical leap. But now we had to do something about the walls.
So with a little help from a weakened Grandpa, a messy little brother, a talented Grandma, a bossy Mom, and dedicated Dad; little Silas transformed his room.
We're hoping to put up a strip of metal along one of the blue stripes and make some magnets to hold up artwork. And maybe build a bookshelf like this someday before he goes to college. Rachel insists we need a huge saltwater aquarium to really complete the effect, but I think the ducks are project enough for us right now.