It feels like the time has flown by and I have tried to squeeze in as many visits as I possibly can while we are in Texas. I devoted the last few days to spending more time with family - I figured they come up to visit us, so I shouldn't ignore them when I'm staying with them. :)
But as I mentioned, I met up with several friends and never thought to pull out the camera. One of these was my best friend from High School, Katie. She's actually getting married this weekend and thanks to my flights, I am going to miss it. I was pretty bummed, but luckily it worked out that we got to meet up for dinner last week and had a great time catching up with the (way too many) years that had gone by. And in another coincidence, she is getting married to another High School friend, Dub, who runs the company that puts out the fabulous Serendipity salt that comes with Chicken Express meals. Who am I to pass up a perfect excuse to celebrate a friend's upcoming wedding by buying fried chicken?!?
Speaking of friends - Anna was super happy to have all of her friends back! Dad said she was moping around the house since Mom and I took off for San Antonio. She and Henry were playing peek-a-boo with the window in the box. I didn't manage to get a photo of Henry sticking his head out, but I did get Anna patiently waited for him to do it again. (He didn't - boo!)
I asked the boys last night if they wanted to go to the zoo or the museum today and Thomas responded that he wanted to go to the "Zooseum". I wasn't quite sure how to interpret that one, but when it started raining this morning, it made the museum the easy choice.
The Fort Worth Science Museum has changed quite a bit since I was a kid. I was happy to see they still had a dinosaur exhibit, but instead of being wowed by all the fossils, Thomas plopped himself down in front of a computer and refused to leave it. I got him away from it a few times to check out something neat, but then he would go "I need to go back to my pu-puter!" Sigh...
I may or may not have drug him away from the computer kicking and screaming, but once he saw the grocery store in the children's section, he forgot all about the computer!
It was a pretty cool set-up that looked like a miniature grocery store. He was running around like a mad man throwing groceries in his cart and then checking out before starting all over. The older kids had a "system" and were complaining to each other that the little kids were "ruining" it. I steered Thomas towards this nice young lady who hadn't made any such complaints. The other older kids need to cool their jets!
Once the older kids cleared out though, Thomas was just as excited to ring up his own groceries! The food goes on the belt and there is a wheel on the side to make the conveyor belt move to the scanner.
Then you scan the food, drop it in the bucket and "ring" up the price. It would have been cool if the items actually had a barcode that worked, but Thomas didn't seem to care at all.
Henry finally came over to check out the grocery store and immediately filled up his cart with bread. What a surprise for my carb lover! I think he actually put a few more loaves of bread in there after I took the photo.
He still had room for a few more groceries though! He is a little too short to reach the tall items on the top shelf, but his older brother was more than happy to help him get a jug of milk. Yay team-work!
Henry got tired of the grocery store eventually and wandered around to check out the rest of the play space. Thomas was more than happy to keep playing grocery store until he heard the distinctive sound of an ambulance wail. Henry had found a play ambulance and it made noises! Thomas bee-lined over to the ambulance to convince Henry to let him drive.
Ha - fat chance on that!
Instead, Thomas found a lab coat and played doctor for awhile. It was actually pretty adorable - they had a bunch of baby dolls and you could weigh them, dress them or "bathe" them. Thomas was taking his baby care duties quite seriously.
I figured Henry wouldn't be too interested in the babies, but I was completely wrong on that. He was so gentle carrying this little baby around and was insistent that Nonni help his dress his baby. I have never seen Henry be so careful - it was also quite adorable! :)
But unsurprisingly, they ended up back at the grocery store. Nonni and I got to sit at a bench off to the side and just chill while the did the shop, check-out and re-stock routine over and over again. I texted Matt and told him we have got to figure out how to make a pretend grocery store in our house. They would play for hours with no parental intervention - which sounds heavenly! :)
Finally we made it back to Grannie and Pawpaw's house! Plus Aunt Jo made it over to hang out. She was trying to un-teach them the Connect 4 "rules" that Grannie had taught them the other day. I appreciate the effort, Aunt Jo, but teaching rules to a 3 and 1 year old is a pretty thankless task. ;)