The Grams Family

Eli has been having a lot of fun learning and reading about animals recently. He loves fast animals. His favorite animal is a cheetah. Addy loves her big brother too. She likes to run around. She also loves water, and has been climbing into the sink recently!

Last summer, we got a dog named Scotchy. He is an English Golden. He is very calm and gentle.

• Eli and Daddy are playing chess
• The window is open
• Mommy brings them cakes
• They all have dinner
• Go to sleep
• Eli has dream about delicious food falling into the sun and people cheering
• Next day Spike and his nephew come over to say hello
• The family are having toast, and Spike makes his own toast with fire breath and says goodbye
• Dad and Eli see a bird flew in and was eating the crumbs
• The bird was named Wingly
• Explains he lives in a land deep in the forest and there is no food
• The family agrees to help out
• They go to pick up some grain from the man in the mill as a temporary solution
• He says he knew a bird named Wingly too who had helped him in the fields one year
• As a reward, the man in the mill let Wingly keep a golden see he found
• They set off on their horses, Paches, John, and Zooey with scotchy.
• In the fields outside the castle, Addy spots a fairy in the flowers
• They share some of their snacks with the fairy, in return the fairy gives them a box of magic powder that will shrink them down to fairy-size
• They enter the forest with Wingly guiding them on Eli’s shoulder and singing the chicken song from majora’s mask peep peep.
• Elworn says hello
• They start getting deep into the forest, but the tree canopy is too thick – it gets too dark
• They turn back to go to Spike’s cave (Eli’s idea)
• They ask spike to fly them past the Great Oak Tree where Wingly lives
• He agrees and flys them down. He dives into the canopy and breaks branches.
• Slightly lighter, he makes a torch for the family and promises to watch the horses left back at his cave.
• Wingly, the little brown bird, shows them a door at the bottom of a tree.
• The family is too big to go in
• They use the fairy’s dust
• Inside is Birdland
• They say hi to Wingly’s friend
• Green grass, blue skys, but little food
• In the hills to the east is swiftheart, where Wingly lives. The west is the bogs of Dragontail. The north past Swiftheart are the mountains of Longuard, and the snakes live in the south.
• They head to Swiftheart with Wingly.
• They stop at Winglys house on the hill and he shows them around.
• They meet with the Chief of swiftheart in his castle at the top of the hill
• He shows them the golden wheat outside his window. It turns birds to gold if they eat it, but he wants the family to see this for themself so they believe him.
• Other birds and the snakes try to eat it, but the birds of Swiftheart must stop them for their own sake. The attacks have increased now that food has gotten more scarce.
• The family heads to Longuard with Wingly
• Addy spots a golden bird
• All the birds had turned to gold from eating the golden wheat
• They head back, understanding the serious nature of protecting the wheat. After a long day, they retire and are staying with Wingly.
• They meet Singly, Wingly’s little brother.
• Eli has the same dream again
• They are awoken in the night with the attack of the birds of dragontail.
• It is a fierce battle; the chief is able to outsmart the dragontail king (red hawk) by sending troops down the middle to catch both his battalions by surprise in the back.
• When the battle is almost over the snakes of the south attack
• Singly is about to get bit by a snake, but the king of the dragontails saves him.
• They finally defeat the snakes of the south, but Singly is gone.
• Wingly is panicked.
• Eli and Daddy plan to go with him the next day to rescue Singly.
• The next day they say goodbye to the girls and Scotchy and head out.
• The plan is to use grappling hoops to scale the wall, have wingly tweet. Single will recognize the tweet and tweet back. They’ll locate Singly and escape quickly.
• They head down into the cloudly boggy marsh to the West
• They hide behind the large bushes.
• They get to the four walled castle, but they forgot the moat.
• Eli throws the grappling hook up and just makes it
• They scale the wall
• Wingly tweets
• Singly tweets back
• They race to singly and open the door
• They find the king of dragontails there welcoming them
• They are surprised. The king of the dragontails invites them in to dinner, and says he wants to show them something the next day.
• They agree, and send a carrier pigeon with a message back to the girls letting them know they are OK.
• That night, Eli has the same dream
• The next day they head to the marshy field outside the castle with the king and his raven guards.
• After stopping, the raven enters a tunnel.
• Once through a little bit, he shines his torch on two graves.
• Wingly’s grandfather and Wingly’s father – they were both kings of Dragontail.
• The king says Wingly will be king too.
• Wingly’s grandfather brought the golden seed and planted it. He knew the man in the mill. The birds of swiftheart wouldn’t let anyone else reap from the fields according to the king, and they were trying to take it back.
• Wingly’s father died in a battle with snakes of the south as this tunnel leads to the south. Wingly and Singly had escaped the battle as children and ended up in Swiftheart.
• Just then snakes jump out in the tunnel, the boys and wingly and the king and guards defeat them.
• They return to the castle
• Wingly tries to convince the king of the dangers of the golden fields, but he is stubborn.
• Wingly, singly and the family go back to Swiftheart and reunite with the girls and scotchy.
• They all go to see the chief, who is staring obsessively at the beautiful golden fields
• They ask him to let the dragontail king come through swiftheart to see the golden birds of longuard, so he will believe in the dangers of the golden wheat.
• The chief refuses, and threatens to banish Wingly.
• The whole family goes back to Dragontail and tries to plead with the king one more time.
• But he is still stubborn, and plans another attack on Swiftheart the next day.
• Wingly is restless that night, but Eli feels confident it will all come together, and food will return, as his dream has become clearer.
• The next day the king gathers his troops.
• Eli and Wingly have a plan, and they tell the girls to head off to Longuard before the troops march.
• The troops starting marching after a speech by the king, and Eli and the boys and scotchy go with them, trepidatiously.
• The chief sees the army out his Window, and prepares the army of swiftheart for battle.
• A battle ensures – no strategy just pure battle.
• Eli and Wingly and Singly finally sneak by the battle and light the golden fields on fire using a piece of wood from the fire in wingly’s house, they all burn.
• The chief and king are both enraged and start to battle Eli, Daddy, Wingly, Singly, and Scotchy, defeating them one by one, when at last the girls return.
• They show the golden bird of Longuard to the king.
• He has a moment of clarity and understands Wingly did the right thing.
• The chief is still enraged that the beautiful golden fields were destroyed, something he could have done long ago.
• The king and chief started an epic sky battle.
• The king won, but he died of his wounds.
• They had fought through the night, and the day broke.
• Wingly flew up and announced the golden fields were no more. As he was talking, the other fields started to grow again. The golden fields had been taking all the nutrients from the soil causing the famine.
• Everyone hailed Wingly as their new king, uniting Swiftheart and Dragontail.
• The golden birds of longaurd even returned to normal.
• They had a huge celebration with lots of melon.
• The family waved goodbye to wingly and singly and headed back.
• They used the fairly dust to grow big again.
• They got their horses back from spike after following the light out of the dark.
• They rode home

On April 15th, Lily was born. She is a very calm baby, and her brother and sister love her very much. We are so thankful she is part of the family.

It has been a while since any updates, but we have had lots of adventures over the past several months. Here are some highlights:

In November we had fun playing musical chairs, dinosaur tea party, and with Eli’s bear and chickie. We even played monopoly with them and pulled them around on a sled.

In December, we enjoyed making up our own versions of the game, “Hi Ho Cherry-O.” We also played with Eli’s Toy Dinosaurs a good bit and played superhero. After Christmas, I had some time off from work. This let us place “race” with the animals around the house. We used some string to create a race track and ran the animals around the house in pairs. Running outside trying to find animals was also a favorite. Eli read Squirrel Nutkin at Dede and Papa’s house, and he enjoyed pretending to be the little animals. Silly Octopus was another game Eli liked during this time.

When January rolled around, Eli enjoyed playing with some of his Christmas presents including his pogo stick and the make-a-story game. In early January, after a fun dinoasuar tea party, Eli and I played in th epark together and went to buy a toy car with some of Eli’s Christmas money. We also liked pretending to be a pixie and a brownie and do chores. Eli really liked “Wild Kratts” during this time, and we would often pretend to “activate” various animals we saw outside. We would also ask animals what they like to eat a lot. Another new game that came about was Sillyman. Sillyman would overreact and confuse what items were. Eli would laugh and laugh.

In early February, Eli and I had a fun time going to Petco and reading books in Barnes and Nobles at the Arboretum. He really enjoyed Llama Llama goes to School and Pete the Cat. We’d play zoo with the animals a lot during this time. We also went to a park together, but Eli mostly wanted to play on the outdoor exercise equipment. We enjoyed building animal pens out of Lincoln Logs and going on walks around the neighborhood. We had a fun time at Gaga’s birthday party during this month.

In March, we told lots of stories. We also starting making paper animals. We’d go through Eli’s book and draw animals. After, Eli or I would cut out the animals. Sometimes, we’d even use them in a puppet show. We raced some cars down the ramp like we used to do, and built worlds for Eli’s cars (color matching) out of Duplo. Eli and I walked to Church together one morning, something Kasey does with him often.

That’s all for now! We’ve had a lot of fun together!

Eli had his first soccer practice four weeks ago. He had a fun time during the first practice where he had to knock down comes with his foot, run through cones, and then play soccer. All the kids would run to the ball. The next week, Eli was a lot more hesitant, but he ultimately played a little and scored a goal with the rest of the kids. He has not wanted to play since then. Thankfully, his allergies are doing a lot better, and we were able to eat out the evening of his first soccer practice.

Eli went to a football game with Daddy a few weeks back. Clemson played Furman. Eli was far more interested with everything going on that was not the football game. He liked watching the band play and the cheerleaders be held up on one foot. He enjoyed getting some peanuts to eat as well. But nothing compared to the Tiger mascots. The big mascot wearing number one and the little mascot wearing 1/2. He loved seeing the Tigers and enjoyed the tiger on top of the scoreboard as well. He loved the mascots so much, we went on the field after the game to try to find them. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find them, but Eli had a fun time nonetheless.

Eli has been telling Kasey and me he loves us a lot recently. It is very sweet. Addy loves her big brother and always smiles when she plays with him. He loves her a lot too. Yesterday, he protected her from being hit by the rocking chair.

Eli and I played a fun game yesterday where one of us would try to roll off the sitting room couch. The other one would try to prevent the person on the couch from falling off. We had a lot of laughs together!

I had a fun weekend with my family. Eli and I went to the farmer’s market and caboose in Matthews on Saturday and had fun playing cars and basketball. Kasey and Eli bought me a nice water bottle for Father’s day. Eli picked it out.