Grandma Spends the Weekend

My mom came Saturday afternoon and stayed two nights.  She brought with her a freezer full of meat and my honey rations for the year.  The beekeepers in my hometown make the most amazing honey that has ever existed and she always procures some for me so that I can have delicious granola and peanut butter snack balls (otherwise known as allergy balls) and muffins and other honey related items all year.  In addition to spoiling the kidlets rotten she repaired my two favorite pair of jeans, one of which is ten years old and another that is seven years old.  Both are completely out of style and cannot be replaced because they aren’t available in stores anywhere.  Believe me, I’ve looked.  I LOVE those jeans, and they are becoming hole-ridden.  My amazing fixer-upper-seamstress of a mother fixed both pairs in a jiffy and made me promise not to wear them in public anymore.  But I have no intentions of keeping that promise, of course.  The jeans are perfectly modest again, and I have no problem wearing scruffy things, such as pajamas and severely outdated clothing anywhere.

Saturday evening my mom decided that she would really like to take the kidlets shopping for clothes.  I was more than slightly skeptical, since the rare times I’ve had the courage to take all four children shopping at once did not go particularly smoothly, and shopping stresses me out anyway.  The kidlets were excited, though, and I agreed to be the chauffeur.  They decided to go to Target, which was a good choice.  It actually ended up going quite smoothly. I’ve never actually taken the kidlets shopping when they really had free reign to pick things out in a store, because only a grandparent would tell them they can pick out any three articles of clothing that they want.

The kidlets were a frenzy of shopping activity within their clothing sections.  They were zooming from one clothing rack to the next at incredible speeds.  I could barely keep up with the cart while I was pushing Mr. Trouble on Two Feet around.  (There was no way I was going to let him loose in the store).  They even used the dressing rooms to try things on, which was a new experience for them.

Mr. SP was all about camo prints.  Who knew?  He was more than thrilled with his green camouflage shirt and shorts, and then found a LEGO watch that he had been admiring for a long time and has worn every day since then.  The Banana found 213 things she wanted, but settled on the most impractical items possible:  a new pink swimsuit, ballet slippers and a new leotard with a tutu attached (let me assure you there are no shortage of swimsuits and leotards in this house).  It was a hard decision contrasted by her biggest sister’s difficult choice over finding the most practical items that she would get the most use out of.  YaYa settled on a new pair of school shoes, a running shirt and a pair of running pants that she will use in running club, which started yesterday.  She’s training at school  for a 5K race this spring.

Through all the crazy excitement, I think all kidlets and grandma had a great time shopping.  We ended the evening by eating huge quantities of  some delicious pizza.