I expect that this week is going to be hectic. I dropped Grace off, this morning, to go to Pre-Teen girls camp. Considering she has been counting down the days since… oh… November or so, she was a little on the excited side! I always miss Grace when she is gone, because she is such a great helper to me, but I am so happy that she is going to be with her friends, soaking up Jesus all week long! Still can’t wait to see her on Friday, though…
Seth also has a camp this week, but it is a day camp… In Fort Wayne… about an hour and a half from home. We signed Seth up for this camp because of his love for video games. He legitimately wants to create video games when he grows up. There is a part of me that hopes he changes his mind, but in the meantime, since we believe in giving our kids every possible opportunity, we’re on the lookout for anything that might actually help him to move in that direction. So I’m going to be driving to Fort Wayne all week long…
This, of course, left me with my “babies” (although Caleb is finally starting to balk at the word at age 7… tear)… After we dropped Seth off, it occurred to me that I really didn’t have a plan for the day. Science Central is closed on Mondays (surprise!), so our membership there didn’t do us any good. Our zoo membership has long since expired, and I really have a hard time paying for one day at the zoo when a membership can easily “pay for itself”, but I couldn’t seem to find an extra hundred bucks in my back pocket to renew the membership, either, so that was out, as well. We finally decided to take a walk. This lasted for approximately 4 minutes, until we came to an area of the sidewalk that was closed and also realized that the temperature must be well into the 90s. We hauled our sweaty selves back to the van…
At this point, I did what any reasonable mother with three small children and no money would do. I decided that we would go browse at Toys R Us… Go ahead, I dare you to tell me that’s not reasonable. The truth is, Miah had a gift card from her birthday, and her favorite baby doll is in desperate need of some clothes, because she is always naked and that is embarrassing when we have company. We went in search of doll clothes. Yeah… the boys totally loved that. I knew that Caleb and Ian each had some money saved from their allowance and birthday gifts, etc, so I indulged them by letting them throw potential purchases into the cart. I think this was especially fun for Caleb, since Ian was in the cart… I mean, how often does he have permission to throw stuff at his little brother? They started out relatively cheap, but as we progressed through the store it occurred to me that I should probably count their money to give them some sort of realistic expectation for what they might be able to afford. I am not kidding you, I was shocked. Those kids were loaded (for a 4 and 7 year old)! We darn near could have gone to the zoo! We exited Toys R Us with a few school supplies (Crayola was buy 1, get 2 free… don’t even get me started), a birthday gift for October (for Grace… and I can’t give any more details at this point, because she actually has friends who are old enough to read this… but I got a fantastic deal), a huge stuffed dinosaur (Ian’s purchase… which, ironically really was exactly what he was looking for), a Pac-man DS game and Thomas the Tank Engine bag (Caleb, or course), and baby doll bottles and clothes for the poor, naked baby doll… Not bad for window shopping, right?
Caleb was just itching to go to the mall after this, because he wanted to buy taffy. Since we still had a couple of hours to kill, that’s where we went. Of course, it was here that we stumbled upon signs for “Tuesday Family Night” discounts, so I guess we at least have a plan for tomorrow… A broken elevator, a few new t-shirts, a JCPenny employee who wanted to sell me a portrait package (I love saying, “Actually, I’m a photographer”), and a couple of bags of taffy later, we made our trek back to the van, in the rain, sloshing through some major puddles, and were on our way to grab a bite to eat for dinner before picking Seth up. Of course, we ate Chick-Fil-A, because there is just something wrong about being in the vicinity of a Chick-Fil-A and not eating there…
We proceeded to pick Seth up (who had a wonderful day, himself, I might add), and then it was home for ½ a game of church league softball (where Miah turned into a hot potato and the boys managed to cover themselves in dirt from head to toe), and then really back home for baths and showers.
By 8:30, my house was completely quiet, and I snuggled down with my laptop and a raspberry lemonade and actually had the time to post to my blog… which you just read…
What a nice day…
Lisa
PS I love driving. I guess I always have, but the time in the car is just a wonderful time for reflection and also for communing with God. I am too tired to get philosophical or theological, tonight, but there was a lot of good stuff going on during our travel time today, and I hope to expound on that more… soon…
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