3 to 1: Tuesday 12/21 McDonald's and Such

Today the boys went to stay with Memaw for a couple hours while I took the Aged P out for a little shopping. They of course had a blast and didn't want to leave. Lucky for them I was planning to take them to McDonald's for lunch so there was no fussing when we had to leave. You would think 11:00 on a Tuesday wouldn't be so bad, but it was packed! We had trouble even finding a table. Wait, back up... we had trouble finding a parking space! I told the boys there are two rules for going to play at McDonald's: 1. Eat your nuggets before you can play. 2. When Mom says it's time to go then you don't complain. How do you think that went? Yeah, not so good. We don't do this very often so they haven't had much practice.

Good gravy there were some big kids playing there that day! Some of the boys looked about 14. I had to get ugly and punk some kids two different times. There were some tween girls that decided they needed to camp out on top of the toddler slide so none of the little kids could go down, so I told them to move. I really don't know why the big kids would want to hog the playground, but it really made me mad.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Collin is the best big brother ever! To get to the top of the big slide you had to climb up 6 big steps probably about 2 feet high each. Owen, of course, can't do that by himself no matter how hard he tries. So Collin would very patiently climb up with him and at each level he would push on Owen's little bottom to get him up the next step. It was really sweet. I wish I had a video of that to show ya'll. So amid the chaos of these crazy older kids here are my two sweet boys slowly climbing to the top and then sliding down together. They did this several times. At one point Owen's sock came off and Collin just quickly picked it up and put it in his pocket and kept climbing.

Finally some of the older kids were racing to the top and not paying attention and knocked Owen over. Collin was not intimidated at all that they were three times his size and he yelled "HEY! THAT'S MY OWEN!" I would have yelled too if they hadn't all been 10 feet above my head. And do you know what happened? Those big ol' boys stopped and said sorry to Owen and then took turns lifting him up onto the steps to get to the top of the slide. Getting down the slide was another adventure because there were kids trying to climb up. I had to get on to them too. Where are these kids' parents?!

So after all that I told the boys we had to go. I think Collin was as fed up as I was with those naughty kids, but Owen could not seem to remember rule #2. He kicked and screamed and hit me and I had to carry him out like a sack of potatoes. Gotta love 2 year old tantrums.

After Owen took a nap we went to the park and tried to fly our kites, but it wasn't quite windy enough. The boys still had fun playing.

love the look on his face and check out that shirt!

cheese!

We also went up to Timothy's office that afternoon for their family Christmas party. There were lots of yummy snacks and the main event was a visit from Santa. Unfortunately for Santa, he got snubbed by both boys. Collin knows Santa isn't real and we try to emphasize the true meaning of Christmas. I wasn't surprised that Owen didn't want to have anything to do with him, he is so shy that he won't even talk with extended family members a lot of the time, much less a stranger. Collin wasn't having it either. Santa asked him twice if he wanted to come sit on his lap and tell him what he wanted, but he just shook his head. Oh well, I don't think it's any real loss.

Here are a few pictures from the party: