Super Moms and GRACE Girls

What a wildly adventurous day we had today!  We quickly are tiring of the cold/rainy/muddy weather and not being able to go enjoy the park or the backyard or just being outside without coats and toboggans and gloves.  Needless to say, these walls are closing in on us, so we needed an adventure today!  We were able to complete our schoolwork rather quickly today.  Ruby identified all of her shapes.  Rachel made lower case letters out of the "magic c".  Ford was frustrating with his writing today, but he did it!  The biggest news, though, was that Ruby completed her potty chart with 25 stickers!!  That means that in 3 days, she has used the potty 25 times!  I'm pretty impressed that she finally has been sticking (ha ha) to it!  So, we decided it was worth an adventure to go find her a prize.  I keep having this urge to go to Costco and I knew Target would have different, if not better, choices than the plain old Wal-Mart here in town, so we decided to make the 30 minute drive to the big city.  Vanessa has mentioned several times that she'd like to see what Costco is like, so on a whim I called to see if they'd like to go, too.  Two Super Moms and five kids later, we're on our way!  Keep in mind that we have an infant, 2 two year-olds, a 3 year-old, and a 5 year-old during our trip.  The car ride was actually extremely uneventful and we were there in what felt like no time.  We got to Target and I decided to take Ruby to the potty immediately even though she had on a Pull-Up because I wanted her to not use the Pull-Up if she didn't have to.  The girl sat on the potty and pooped!  I decided at that moment she could have anything she wanted in the store :)  Seriously, if you've never been through potty training, this is HUGE!  She picked out a Rosetta doll (one of Tinkerbell's friends) and we strolled around the store.  Once we got to the check-out, she changed her mind and wanted Tinkerbell, so we went and got the Tinkerbell instead (which I'm glad that we did) and finally made our way to the car.  Vanessa had gone to change Hyland and Kingston's diapers and met us at the car.  I think Tinkerbell helped Ruby make it through Costco because there weren't many samples today for her hungry self.  The kids were awesome and did a great job in both stores.  We were able to get everything we needed, plus a few extras that I thought we might wish we had once we got home, and still stayed in our budget.  We decided to eat lunch at Costco which consisted of smoothies and pizza.  Vanessa was brave enough to wait in line for the food while I took all three Ingrams to the potty.  And all three of them actually used the potty!!!  Score another one for the team!  Vanessa was even braver next to sit with all five kids while I rushed the cold stuff out to the cooler in the car.  I was super impressed with how well everyone behaved and how efficiently we maneuvered through the stores without a disaster today.  No one had a meltdown, no one had an accident, and no one cried that they didn't get something.  I thought Ruby and/or Ford and possibly Kingston would fall asleep on the way home, but there was just too much energy for that!  By the time we got home, it was too late to take a nap because we needed to leave for art and violin, so we got all our groceries put away, cleaned the spilled smoothie off their clothes and changed, and packed up for our activities.  Ford did prints with Ms. Lisa at art class and Rachel learned some new things on her violin and then we headed to GRACE Girls.  Allen met us at the church to take Ford and Ruby on the playground while Rachel and I helped make baskets with the girls.  Rachel had a great time getting in a little time with Ms. Lisa and I had fun helping the girls with their baskets.  Long ago before we had kids, Lisa and I started the GRACE Girls to help 6th grade girls who needed a safe place to go after school or who couldn't afford enrichment activities.  It was nice to be a part of that again and feel like I was being helpful, but I definitely don't want to go back to it full time any time soon.  Several of the girls are Allen's students and he needs a break from them after a long day of work, so he was happy to spend time with our kids on the playground!  We came home for an early dinner and early bedtime after a long day of adventures and the kids were all asleep by 7:15!!  I was so proud of them for doing so well out in public and so happy to get home and rest after using all my energy!!