Barn Friends and a Walmart Trip

It has become almost a daily occurrence that the kids go down to the barn to play .. either during the day on the weekend or after dinner through the week. We feed the cats, they play with the cats, they ride their bikes, climb the rocks, and find critters (a toad, butterfuly, opossum, grasshopper, and a baby bird were on the list this week). I think they would live down there if we would let them. (Oh, and Addyson does have her shirt on backwards in the picture below .. was that like the whole day .. she dressed herself and didn't want it turned around.)






Aeron's word for a quite a while now is "somedays."
"We rode our bikes. Somedays."
"Somedays the dog wicks me."
I think this is his version of "sometimes" and even "the other day." It's kind of like "it happened once, but not just recently."
Aeron told us the other day that "when he turns 4 he will wose his teef." Seems a little early to me, but what do I know?


I've noticed Addyson puts L's after her R's or even replaces them in her words. She likes to take a ride in the "car-l" and we will do that "tomollow." Addyson is pretty excited for preschool. Matt was talking to her about it one night before bed and she had all kinds of questions. He said she should just listen to her teacher and all would be well. Recently when the kids have been playing, I have overheard her say, "We have to do 'this or that' because the teacher said."


I try to avoid taking both Addyson and Aeron on grocery trips with me for obvious reasons. I usually pick a time when I can just take one (they are so good when only one goes on errands with Matt or me!) or just go by myself. This weekend that was not an option, since Matt was out of town. I took both of them to Walmart bracing myself for the worst and arming myself with snacks, suckers, and even new light-up trinkets they had never seen before. Much to my delight, they were wonderful on this particular Walmart trip, and even did well on the few other stops we made - I never once had to threaten leaving or dig in my purse for the hidden weapons. Maybe they are growing up or maybe we just had a good day.. whatever the reason, I'll take it.


When the three of us got home, they wanted to help unload the groceries. They each made about three trips up and down the steps with things like a bag of shredded cheese, lasagna noodles, animal crackers.. things that weren't going to break if they tripped or dropped them. After Aeron picked up the watermelon by himself at Walmart "cuz he has trong muscles" and promptly tossed it onto the box of garlic bread, I thought I should play it safe. Anyway, they made all these trips as I was putting the things away that went in the freezer and the basement. When I finally made it upstairs with the rest of the groceries, I was suprised to see the kids had actually put away each of the items as they came upstairs with them. Their snacks were on the snack shelf and the cheese was in the cheese drawer in the fridge. I did find one box of lasagna noodles on the living room floor by the new socks one of them brought up. And after putting all the groceries away, I just couldn't find one more box of lasagna noodles .. after asking Aeron, I found them in the fridge. Where else would they go?