This is my darling grandson Andrew, who turned 10 last week.  He has inherited all of the mischief genes in both sides of his family.  I'm really not sure whether to feel sorry for my daughter, or just keep laughing at her problems with his, um, really strange behavior.

For his birthday, he had a sleepover with 3 friends invited.  Two of them actually fell asleep at a decent time, but Andrew and another child were still awake.  To amuse themselves they decided to paint the other boy's faces while they slept.  Fortunately, they made sure they used washable markers, so it could have been worse, but after rolling the sleeping boys over, they gave them mustaches, and multicolored polka dots.  Having done this, they were able to fall asleep themselves.

When my daughter was telling me about this, I had to laugh.  My first question, of course, was whether she took pictures or not.  Nope!  The two painted kids were so freaked out she was totally occupied with getting their faces clean before their moms picked them up.  One of them used soap and water, while the other tried just water.  The soapy one came clean, the other one needed a few hints before the soap touched his face.  Gina said they were good sports about it--after their faces were clean.  Before they were clean was a whole other story though.

It doesn't show in this photo, but Andrew is playing cards with me.  The kid's a card shark.  He learned when he was 5, or maybe 4 to play UNO, and has never lost a game to my knowledge.  His dad is teaching him to play chess, and he also plays soccer, although that's not one of his favorite things to do.

I got a visit from Gina, Andrew, and the twins yesterday (Anika and Laurie), since they came in to visit their dad for Father's Day.  Anika and Laurie (a boy) are adopted from Romania, and they just turned 18 last week.  Three birthdays in one week.  That surpasses my kids birthdays.  They, at least are 1 week apart.  And no twins for me.  Gina had given up on having kids of her own, so adopted 3 from Romania, then, of course, finally had Andrew.

I'm still in a learning process here on getting this blog started, so please bear with me until I'm sure what I'm doing.  I know there are other things I can do to personalize it, so I'll be getting to them eventually.  The building I live in has outdated wiring, which slows my Internet down to a snails pace, and sometimes causes it to just stop until I restart it.  The good news is, they are going to renovate the place starting in November, so I'll be living with a lot of noise and dust, probably breathing through a dust mask most of the time, but hopefully by this time next year it will all be like brand new.

So, I'll keep doing a few get acquainted posts until I get things running the way I want them to be, and see ya later.

A.