The biggest present I had for the boys, I didn't even get around to giving them on Christmas. Ever since the Texas trip when they had such a blast playing in the fake grocery stores, I have been saving boxes and empty cans to make them their own grocery store!
I don't think Matt had any clue how much I was squirreling away because I was hiding it from the kids. Even he was pretty impressed by the extent of our new grocery store. I made the coffee table the dry goods section, the fireplace was for veggies, bread & canned goods, while the cabinet under the TV was the refrigerated and frozen food section. I even used paint on the inside of the mayo, ketchup and barbecue containers to make them even more realistic. The boys were ecstatic about everything!!
The fact that Nonni bought them a super awesome shopping set was a total coincidence! It had a register with play money, shopping basket and the green apron Henry insisted on wearing while shopping. Thomas wanted to be a pilot, but also wanted to shop. Once I explained to him that pilots need to eat as well as fly planes, he decided he could do both!
The little shopping basket had a few good runs before I dug out these larger reusable shopping bags. They were pretty excited about how many groceries they could cram into one bag.
Which of course led to more of a mess on the floor when they were ready to start over on their shopping. I cleaned up for them a few times before I made them start restocking the shelves. They caught on pretty quick where everything was supposed to go.
Nonni got in on the fun by running the cashier. Thomas got the concept of helping to add things up and handing over money. I think we can put price tags on things soon and really maximize the learning abilities of our grocery store. But for now, we just sorta pretended to check out.
While they were napping, I made a run to Target to cruise the toy aisle for clearance items. We discovered last year that it is a great time to buy birthday presents for the boys (if I can only remember I bought them...)! Imagine my surprise when I randomly found this plastic shopping cart!!! Matt had banned the metal ones for fear of the damage it would do and they were ridiculously expensive. But a plastic one? That was on sale for $7?!?! Heck yes!
They actually had three there, but I only bought one because the boys need to work on their sharing skills. Of course, Henry got plenty of time to play with it alone before his brother woke up from nap time. He saw it and took off running to go shopping with it. Well worth the $7! After paying for the plastic veggies and bread, it came to a whopping $25 total. Best bang for the buck I got on any of the presents I gave this year! :)
I'll be honest, there were a few tears the first time the shopping cart traded hands, but they did pretty good once we instituted a timer system. They were thrilled about how much food they could cram in there. But the small basket was still the second favorite - it probably feels more like real shopping than the reusable bags.
But the boys weren't the only ones playing with their new toys. I set up the secondary flash to play with lighting in the living room. It's a pretty big room, so I was trying to see what difference it would make to flash it against the side wall in addition to bouncing off of the ceiling. Thomas was very interested in the second flash.
As was Eliza! Apparently they are used to the flash on the camera, but this was new and exciting!
I also played with the studio lights in the front room. It was pitch black outside when I turned them on and I used them as the only light source to get a few photos. It forced me to use a little bit slower shutter speed than I would have preferred, but I managed to get a few in focus. (Little kids move so fast!)
Henry may or may not have been hitting his momma with the pillow and laughing about it. He's such a little toot sometimes!
As always, Eliza was in the middle of it even though she was nervous about the boys sneaking up on her. She just can't miss out on the action even if she is really terrified on the inside. Love this dog and her crazy idiosyncrasies. Hopefully they were genetic and not picked up from me...
I also love the new lights! Think Matt would notice if I slowly turned the front room into a real studio?!? ;)