Quality time with Lance

    I got to spend some quality time with my three year old grandson Lance on Tuesday.   I babysat Lance for part of the day and ferried my granddaughter Luna to and from kindergarten while their mother Rachel worked at the bee store.  First we did a work related errand. Lance accompanied me as we walked three blocks to the bank to make some deposits for the bee store. Lance is always enthused about this particular chore as it usually includes a stop by the Pilchuck Drive-in for a milk shake on the return trip.  Lance has been expanding his milk shake horizons over the past month and has learned that he likes butterscotch, pumpkin pie, and marshmallow milk shakes.
    At home Lance assisted me in sweeping leaves off the deck of the tree house and installing a latch on the clean out door of my new chicken tractor.  We also assembled the bed in the guest room.  I say we, but Lance's role was more supervisory in nature.  Lance is very easy to watch if you involve him in what you are doing and the activity involves some kind of tool.  It really bothers him to see something not fully assembled or in need of repair such as a burnt out light bulb or missing switch plate.  In the case of the bed, it bothered him no end that the bed wasn't put together.  Linda has been painting the guest room so the bed had been taken apart so it could be moved away from the walls.  Linda had already asked me to put the bed back together, but Lance was determined to give me no rest until the job was done.  He was also unhappy that the base plate for the overhead light was hanging down six inches from the ceiling.  He very grudgingly accepted my explanation that Grandma Linda had done that to allow her to paint that portion of the ceiling.  It was almost like he was suspicious that I was making up an excuse to avoid the work.
    We took advantage of a respite in our normally rainy November weather to take some pictures of our neighbors' scottish highlander cattle.  Lance is quite taken with the neighbors' cows and always makes a point of announcing their presence in the field across from our house.  It's pretty easy to tell which pictures Lance took as the pictures are shot through the fence rather than over it.