In which the day got much better...

I will admit that this morning I was not in a real positive place about the upcoming day. But it ended up being a wonderful day!!

1. The girls all slept in this morning allowing me to get all my necessary morning chores and reading done in peace and quiet!! I was ready for them when they did wake up.

2. Arrived at the service station for my car inspection and there were no cars in line, and no cars in the bay. The girls were able to watch the inspection from the waiting room window. I was out the door in less than 10 minutes. While I was there, 5 cars lined up for service!

3. Checking my wallet when leaving the service station I realized that instead of $7 I had $12, so I decided to treat us all to lunch at the McDonalds with a playground. We got there at 11 am so there was no crowd. The girls ate and played for about an hour, while I was able to read and just veg out a little in the air conditioning.

4. Found that the park that MB's day camp is at is a hidden gem for the Raleigh parks. It is a true park, not a playground. It has two old houses that serve as the buildings and the grounds had some of the most spectacular gardens for this time of year. One of their 'elephant ear' plants has leaves as big as K.

5. The daycamp leaders were kind enough to let us in the building 30 minutes before her camp started so we did not have to hang out in the heat outside. I had packed a traveling checkers game in my bag so MB, K and I sat down and tried to figure out how many games we could make out of the checker set. No squabbling.

6. When camp started, MB shooed us out. No problems with no wanting to stay.

7. At the used book store I managed to find 22 books for less than $45. Four of which were some 4th grade science unit textbooks for $1 each. I figured they would be great to pull some science materials out of. I also bought every Magic School Bus book I could find. I figured if MB loves the program so much that I am up an hour early on Mondays just to tape them, I might as well have some of the books for us to read. I found various other books for this year; a book on mummies, a book on ancient rome, a bug book, two Abeka readers (similar to the old Ginn readers I have now).

8. After the bookstore we still had 2 hours to go, so I decided that the mall would be the best place for loitering. I generally do not go to malls, not much there that I can't buy cheaper some where else, but it was over 100 outside. K did so well. She always surprises me when Mb is not along with how well she listens and behaves. We only went into 3 stores, first the Disney store because if any store is child friendly it is that one. I found some great deals and ended up buying a cute stuffed Nemo puppet for K that actually speaks about 5 different Nemo lines, a pair of shorts for K and pajamas for the girls, all were 60%-75% off. After that we went to the Discovery store because I wanted to look goggle at their expensive science kits. Then we went to a large clothing store to use their elevator to go back up to the 2nd floor. As we walked through that store K was naming color after color for me.

9. Picked MB up at camp, which she really, really enjoyed!

10. After cooling off in the wading pool, MB came in, voluntarily, to do her schoolwork that we had not gotten to in the morning rush and which I was already planning to combine with tomorrow's work. Then she helped me put all of the dinner together while K helped by playing with some of our salt dough. It was one of those 'picture' scenes: We are all wearing aprons because MB insisted, MB is peeling carrots while I stir the rice, K is 'making cookies' at the table and EM is swinging and laughing at all of us.

So the day I was dreading really turned out to be a very blessed day!!

Peace,

Amy