Keeping Busy

In an effort to keep the offspring from thinking too hard about the missing parental unit, I have kept them running all day. We started with cinnamon french toast for breakfast, after snuggling with Gracie (who climbed up into Trevor's spot and woke me up) for a good long time.

After breakfast, we got dressed and cleaned the playroom. OK, that's not really true. I blogged for about 30 minutes and shamefully ignored my children, and then we got dressed and cleaned the playroom. And cleaning the playroom was more like me yelling at Grace to get her behind in there and help Nathan, for the love of Pete! But I digress.

Trevor and I decided that this would be a good time to get Nathan doing chores on a regular basis. Our plan was two-fold. First, it would keep him busy during Trevor's absence. An idle boy is just asking for trouble. Secondly, it would give him more responsibility and we have been shamefully lax about assigning chores to the kids. Nathan should be doing something on a daily basis besides clearing the table.

So, Nathan vacuumed the living area this morning after the playroom was cleaned. He did it with gusto, although we need to work on his precision and technique.

After the house was in order, we went to Lowe's to get some weed and feed/fire ant killer for the lawn. After we purchased what we needed, I took the kids to that wondrous world of the McDonald's Playland. People, you would have thought that I gave them tickets to Disneyworld.

We don't usually frequent the inside of McDonald's because, well, we want fast food. We certainly eat our share of Happy Meals, but if we wanted slow food, we would go to a real restaurant. As a result, my kids think of McDonald's Playland as something exotic and out of the ordinary, which was good because we needed special today.

I let them play for about 30 minutes (note to self: bring a book next time), and then we had to leave so that we could finish our shopping. As I was driving through the adjacent parking lot to get to Walmart, I noticed an indoor miniature golf place. Since we had already established a pattern of fun and games, I decided to give it a whirl. When we opened the door, I realized that it was one of those black light places. The entire 18 holes was in the dark with only black lights to show the way. The kids had so much fun!

They loved seeing the way their clothes glowed and the course was painted in these really great fluorescent colors. Gracie got tired of playing after about, oh, hole 3, but Nathan played all the way through.

When we were finished, we had to run the gauntlet of video games and sure-to-take-your-money claw machines. I was weak, and got $5 in change so they could play a little longer. We now have a collection of candy machine bracelets, frogs, balls and erasers as a tangible reminder of our day at the miniature golf place.

On to Walmart for a few things (I'll be so glad when the Super Target opens up across the street!!) and then home. On the way I stopped at Dairy Queen and bought a round of milkshakes for the kids and a Kit Kat Blizzard for myself. As the kids sat in the back contentedly slurping their treats, I reflected on how well they had behaved. God was so gracious to me by answering my prayers and blessing us with this beautiful day together.

God is good.