Last week, Pete had to go and do a Professional Development day in a town about 2 hours away. It’s our nearest ‘shopping town’, where people from here go when they want to hit some decent shops. It’s main allure for me is the fact that it has a Spotlight and a Kmart. So when Pete suggested that the kids and I accompany him and spend the day shopping while he was busy learning, I jumped at the chance.
It meant an early morning, and we were dressed and on the road before 7.00am, arriving a little earlier than Pete needed to be there. It was nice having the couple of hours in the car with my husband.. having that bit of time together with a chance to chat without doing anything else was quite lovely.
We noticed when we drove into town that the indoor play centre I had promised to take Mayana to was closed down. Uh-oh!
First stop though.. shopping! Mayana and I shopped till we dropped in Kmart. It’s a fabulous place to buy essentials for kid’s wardrobes, and I also found $5.00 cushions for the crocheted cushion fronts I had been working on!
I got quite a haul for the kids as a start to set up their summer wardrobes. After being in size 0 clothes for nearly a year, Mayana seems to have skipped size one and is suddenly in need of size 2 clothes! This is the first size that we haven’t got clothes put away for (you know, the ones we were given or handed down when she was born), so the first time that I’ve really got to shop for my girl’s wardrobe! Reuben is also into a new size (000) and I need to populate his very unisex wardrobe with a few boy clothes.
Mayana was such a good girl while we were shopping, and after lunch I spotted a nail salon. After finding out that a child’s manicure would only cost me $5.00, I decided that would be a perfect special treat for my girl.
She LOVED it! She was such a good girl, and sat there so still taking it all so seriously. After I gently swayed her from choosing an awful snotty green colour, she settled on bright pink, to match her dress. As she explained the whole process, “First they scratched my nails, then they cleaned them, then they rubbed them, then they painted them. Then I put my hand in the blue lights, then I was done!” It was definitely $5.00 worth spending for the memory it made for her. She has been so careful to keep her gorgeous fingernails safe, and shows anyone who cares to look.
After hitting Spotlight, I still had an hour or so to burn. I spotted a McDonalds across the road and remembered that the playground at this one is better than most. What a fabulous alternative to the play centre I was going to take Mayana too… and all for the price of a much-needed cup of coffee! You can’t beat that!
This particular playground has quite high spaces, and apparently it’s a bit of a maze inside (I’m taking Mayana’s word for it!), and she had fun ‘being an explorer’ and trying to find her way to the highest points. She was the only one in the playground while we were there, and she had an absolute ball.
While Mayana played, Reuben tried his first taste of food out of a packet… He absolutely loved it. It was almost funny, I couldn’t reload the food fast enough, and he would cry and kick in between mouthfuls and gulp down the food as soon as it hit his lips. I think he would have eaten the whole packet if I’d have let him… but I wasn’t sure how his bowels would take it and I for one did not want to be the one to find out.
When Pete had finished, we went and picked him up and took him to Nana’s pantry, a fabulous bulk-buy foodstore, which sells all sorts of dry goods. We’ve been to the store close by to us, but this is the main store, and had SO much more variety. We stocked up on bread mixes, dried fruit, nuts, cereals, grains (hello quinoa!) and seeds. Another huge perk to this particular store is that they also have a gelato section, which ours doesn’t. And oh what delicious ice-cream they make. After quite some time, and a number of tastings, we finally settled on our flavours of choice.
Um. Yum! I think I would drive back to this town for the gelato alone!
I had such a lovely day out with my kiddies. They were both beautifully behaved, and it’s nice to know that we can go out and do things like this with minimal fuss or disruption to our overall routines.
Hopefully Peter has more PD’s to go to in the near future!
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Thank you!!