Gunner's Stay with Gumma & Gumpa

Before I start I want to thank Jodi was posting a Happy Birthday to our Mom. I totally forgot to put anything on the family blog to wish Mom Happy Birthday. But don't worry, I did call her personally on her birthday Saturday and wished her a happy birthday over the phone. Plus I did send her a birthday card. So I am not a totally lame daughter.

Now back to our regular scheduled blog post.

A couple of weeks ago our grandson Gunner came to stay with us for a few days while his parents (Mike's son Brandan & daughter in law Crystal) went to Vegas.

It was great fun having Gunner, but very tiring as well. Now I know why you should have kids while in your 20's. Much more stamina. But it is still fun being Grandma and Grandpa, better known as Gumma and Gumpa (as Gunner would call us).

Here is Gunner & Gumpa playing with the Marbleworks set. I bought 2 sets of these from Discovery Toys about 20 something years ago when my Brandon was a small boy.

He just loves playing with this every time he comes to our house. It's been the best toy investment.

On Saturday we took Gunner to the Western Science Center at Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet. This museum is the result of the artifacts they found while digging for the Diamond Valley Lake reservoir. Danica was working that Saturday as a volunteer for school credit. This was our first time to this museum. It was perfect for taking Gunner to.

Plus we got our own personal tour guide. Doesn't get much better than that!

This museum has some permanent exhibits including the Life on Earth Timeline, The Big Dam hole (and no, I am not swearing) it's where you can use interactives to learn about the people and animals that inhabited the Diamond Valley Lake site over time. And you can discover how scientists uncovered evidence of their existence. You can also watch 2 different movies in their really cool theater where you sit on fake rocks while watching a circular movie screen. And the big room called Snapshots in time.

Where you learn about the mammoths and mastodons that used to live in the Diamond Valley Lake area. And you can see some of their fossils as well as the bones of a huge giant sloth . Pretty cool. Who knew that such creatures once roamed the area around where Eric and my families live. Glad they are not here now.


They have lots of activities for the kids. Here is Danica helping Gunner use his crayon over an engraving to make a print of a giant sloth.

The kids could even make their own fossils. Here is Gumpa helping Gunner.

And we found out these are not Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are something completely different. Who knew?

Most of my photos didn't turn out very good in here. I hate the way that photos with flash turned out and the most of the ones I took without flash came out blurry as Gunner never stands still for very long.


They also had a temporary exhibit of the cartoon "Peanuts". Mostly it was stuff about Charles Schultz and someone's collection of Peanuts memorabilia. It reminded me of being a kid since Charlie Brown & Snoopy was really popular when I was a kid.

And the museum had an area of cool puzzles and brain teasers to try out. Some where pretty hard. We were having so much fun playing in this area that I totally forgot to take photos.

So if you are ever in the Hemet area of California, you should check out this museum. It does cost money, but worth it for a few hours of fun education.

I think the most fun Gunner had while at our house was playing video games with my Brandon.

I think almost every waking moment was spent playing video games. Brandon even enjoyed playing with Gunner. And they were both very good at taking turns. Gunner had so much fun at our house that he hardly would take time to eat. He did like his french fries though.

I've posted a few videos below of Gunner while playing video games with Brandon. I thought they were so cute.

Gunner slept on our couch. He never did go to bed before 11:30pm. This kid doesn't like to stop. But once he did fall asleep he was out all night & woke up both days at about 10:15am. Which was the perfect schedule for us.

We thought we would have Gunner all day Sunday, but his parents showed up around 1:00 or so to pick him up.

He finally posed for a couple of photos before leaving. I could never get any good photos of him as he wouldn't stop for 2 seconds to take a photo.

I like this one of him out front of our house, but he closed his eyes as the sun was too bright. All in all it was a fun filled weekend. Can't wait to do it again. The only bad thing was that Gunner didn't really want to eat anything (too busy having fun). And boy is that kid stubborn. It's the Chalfant genes in him. Seems all the Chalfant men have quite the stubborn streak in them. Which made taking him into the grocery store right after he woke up from a nap a bad idea. He didn't want to go where I wanted, he'd drop anchor right where he was. And I ended up carrying him out of the store kicking & screaming as he didn't want to do what I wanted him to do.

Other than a little tantrum, the weekend was great. Can't wait to do it again. I love being a Gumma.

Kim