"WINTER BREAK"

Shade had two days off from school this week for "winter" break. I didn't want to be cramped up in the house for 2 days with all 3 kids, so we decided to try and go out and have fun even though it was freezing cold outside (the high was 9 degrees and cloudy on Monday, and 20 degrees on Tuesday with snow).

On Monday, we decided to go to the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum. It is a bit of a drive and I was nervous about the 10 minute outdoor walk from the parking garage to the museum in the freezing cold, but that is one of Shade's favorite places, so we went. I took the jogging stroller we have so I could go over snow easily and have storage space. To get to the museum, I bundled Olive in the seat and bundled Eli in the storage space. I was afraid Olive might bump Eli off or his blanket. But the kids had a ton of fun. Olive was excited to see and touch everything (she only got upset about not being able to go where she wanted three times), Shade loved trying every display, and even Eli was an angel the whole time. The only downside was that a lot of other people had the same idea as us, so there were a lot of other kids there. When we finally made it to the big building blocks, about 98% of them were being hoarded by the other kids, so we built a small tower and then went to play in the water, which probably was not the best thing to end our trip with since we had to walk outside back to the car. Especially since it took us three times as long to get back to the car as it took us to get to the museum...

So I had bundled Eli on top of Olive in the stroller for the walk back to the car since they had both fallen asleep. Then before we went outside I spent 5 minutes looking for my keys in the backpack I had brought (it is a backpack with TONS of pockets, and the keys had fallen into a different pocket while we were walking around the museum) to make sure they were easily accessible so I didn't have to do that in the freezing cold outside. I put them in my coat pocket and we left. When we got to the car, I reached in my pocket and they were gone! I started to panic a little bit. If it was a warm, sunny day, perhaps I would not have been as worried. So we started walking back to the museum with Shade and I scouring the ground looking for keys. On the way, Shade suggested we say a prayer (although I had been silently doing that this whole time), so when we got back to the museum, we sat down and Shade said a sweet, simple prayer even though there was a guy standing right by us, Shade didn't care. I then went up and asked the people at the front desk if someone had turned in any keys and they said "no, but we have this watch..." So we went back outside in the freezing cold toward the car, again scouring the ground. We were almost back to the parking garage and were passing by a liquor store when a thought came into my mind to go ask in the store if they had my keys. At first I was hesitant. I didn't really want to haul 3 little kids into a liquor store and I was thinking that would be kind of a weird place to turn in some keys. But then I thought, what the heck, it can't hurt. So I took my kids into the liquor store and asked if anyone had turned in some keys. The girl behind the counter looked way to young to be working there. She asked me what the keys looked like, I told her, and she pulled out - MY KEYS!!! I was so relieved, I almost started crying. We made it back to our car, got buckled in, and said a thank you prayer. Then Shade and I discussed how sometimes God allows bad things to happen to us so we can learn how to pray, how to trust God, and how to recognize answers to our prayers. Boy am I glad I had followed through on that thought to go into a liquor store!



On Tuesday, we decided to try out Jungle Java (an indoor playground for kids with a snack bar) and go to a movie (Big Hero 6). We did the movie first, at the Farmington Civic Theater (by the way, the tickets are now $4 and they charge for infants - a "new policy" - just FYI). Shade loved it, Olive appeared to like most of it, and Eli ate once but otherwise was quiet the entire time! And Jungle Java was fun (although they don't allow outside food, so it can be expensive). Shade made friends with several kids real fast, and Olive mostly kept going down the slides in the toddler section. Eli was a big hit among the other kids who all wanted to see "the baby." But he was a good boy the entire time there too. It was a great day!


Other events:
Olive can be timid in new situations, especially around adults, but she can warm up to other kids pretty quickly, especially if they are about her size. When we were at the museum we went up to the dance room where she was going crazy with dancing, of course. There was a little boy about her age who looked really hesitant to dance in front of all those people. So Olive went right up to him and said "come on, dance!" and started dancing in front of him. His face lit up right away and he started following her around and dancing until he had to leave. But she can also be a typical toddler. When we went to Shade's karate class last week, there was a girl there who was a couple years older than her. They were playing with the toys (they have a toy chest for the little kids to keep busy) and Olive seemed to play real well with her (possibly because she is used to playing with Shade). Olive kept handing her toys and talking to her. Then a younger girl about Olive's age came over to play, and of course the two of them kept wanting to play with the exact same toy. In fact, more than once Olive would take a toy away from the younger girl and then hand it to the older girl...

Also, we were in the car driving home and the kids were eating a cheese stick. Olive was cranky because she didn't get a very long nap, so when she broke her cheese stick in half and realized she didn't want it to be in half, she started crying and wouldn't eat it anymore. Then at one point I looked at her in the rear view mirror and saw her looking very sadly down at the two halves of cheese and she said "wake up, cheese! Wake up!" :)

And then, on the drive to Jungle Java, Shade started getting philosophical (he often will ask some pretty deep questions for a little kid, like who was God's father, etc). He started asking if the Holy Ghost will be the last person on earth because of course he needs to get a body too, but he also needs to help everyone else... Good question!