Proud moment

On our way out of town today we stopped to visit Uncle Steve at IFD 22.

Just before this picture a call came in and the other truck left for a medical call. Once they left we kept visiting and pretty quickly another call came in for help.

So, our visit ended as the rest of the fire fighters suited up and headed out. It ended up the call they were responding to was on the same street as the station so we drove by the two trucks and ambulance that joined them.

The proud moment came right after we passed them when our sweet girl told her daddy “we should pray for them, for Uncle Steve to be safe and for the hurt person to be well”. He agreed and they prayed.

Hearing her little voice from the backseat asking God to make them well and keep Uncle Steve safe and give us safe travels brought a happy tear to my eye.

A little info can go a long way

While acknowledging it may be too early to rejoice, since I’m still at home in Edmond and not at my dad’s in Indiana, it seems like we’re off to a good start for our coming trip.

We are scheduled to begin an exciting journey today. First Indiana for Thanksgiving and then Philadelphia for WordCamp US.

With so much time away from home I’m a bit more anxious than usual prior to traveling and decided to check on our flight one more time late last night. Our connecting city was Chicago. They’re currently having a winter storm and flying through there isn’t looking like a good option at the moment.

The website said that travelers with destinations on the list of affected cities could change with no fee as long as their original departure and destination cities remained the same. It seemed like I should see about changing. Since I had bought our original ticket through AAA and not American I couldn’t make the change myself online.

So, I called American Airlines and discovered that yes, since our flight went through a city on their list we could switch for no fee. We rebooked through DFW for just a few hours later than our original flight, still on the same day.

Hopefully this is a win all around. A bit more time to finish getting ready this morning and not trying to go through a city having weather troubles. Though we could have probably been rebooked at the airport, that would have meant an extra hour and half in the airport early in the morning with a kiddo. Being home with her is much less stressful than hanging out with her for extra time in the airport.

What a change from my first days of traveling, back before cell phones, the Internet, and easy access to flight information from anywhere! I already had an alternate flight through DFW in mind when I called the reservation line, I knew that seats were available and the timing looking good. Back in the day, we just called an 800 number and hoped that the person on the other end would check things out and find us a way to get where we wanted to go. That worked, but this way seemed much smoother.

Maybe there is wrong side of the bed to wake up on

Yesterday our girl was just out of sorts all day. It started very early and lasted until she was out for the night. Kinda makes me wonder if there is something to the idea of “waking up on the wrong side of the bed”.

Before we even left the house at 8 AM I had to tell her many, many times to quit climbing on me, touching my face, jumping onto me, and doing all sorts of other things that she knows she shouldn’t be doing. Then, when leaving she decided “I want to lead” and basically tripped Morgan on the way out the door in her rush to get in front of him. Had he not caught himself it could have been a very different day for all of us. After almost falling he deemed it a do-over morning and we all went inside and started leaving the house all over again.

It didn’t improve much from there…at one point near the end of church service I finally had her sit by herself on the empty section of the row behind us because she just wouldn’t quit talking. Talking about what, you ask? Nothing! She was narrating some nonsense to her coloring book and doing it so loudly I couldn’t hear the lesson.

For lunch we joined quite a few friends for a class pitch-in at someone’s house. Her most notable transgression there was yelling “you’re not my mommy” to a friend who was telling her to stop opening and closing the screen door. She made it about 3 steps post-yell before Morgan made it to her in time for some correction. This friend is one she sees weekly and has lunch and/or dinner with each Sunday. She knows it is someone we trust and she should obey. She did make a sweet apology once released from time-out and confirmed that the two of them could still be friends.

Then, in the evening at another friend’s house for dinner and small group I walked into the room she was playing in to check on her (which I did because I’d heard the mean way she was talking to the younger kids from the other room) in time to see her yell no and push on the other kiddo. This all happened in spite of several conversations about how to talk to our friends and what to do with her hands. I scooped her up and moved her to a time-out chair. Not fun for any of us. Once she was freed from time-out (yes, she could tell me exactly what the problem was and what she could do better), I spent the rest of the night in the same room just being present in case further correction was needed.

It seriously was rough all day with her with no apparent reason. Of course, the reason could be she is 4 years old and sometimes that’s just life with a 4 year-old 🙂

Lego Beginnings

Lego has been a daily play item this past week. It’s been great! So, I decided to share a bit about our Lego journey in a few posts.

I love watching our girl be creative. She’s enjoying working with us to build complicated things and also making her own creations.

It all started a few years back when we stopped at the Lego Store in the mall to see if she’d enjoy playing with them. (Her dad being a fan may have helped guide us into the store). She did. She jumped right in, standing at the table and connecting the bricks to each other. She found pieces of ice cream cones and put them together and tried to sell them to us. Based on that experience when her grandparents asked what she’d like for her birthday we let them know that Duplo would be a great birthday gift.

They sent the the LEGO DUPLO Creative Ice Cream for her birthday a little over a year ago. It was funny that the one they sent was the same as the pieces she had played with the most in the store. I guess great minds really do think alike 🙂 It was a hit, she played with it lots.

A few months later she received the LEGO DUPLO Pink-Box-of-Fun for Christmas. She loved it! There were some pictures on the insert of things she could build and she enjoyed copying that with our help to make the things pictured. Months later she was building things all by herself.

Since then she has recently moved on to playing with new sets with smaller pieces, but that seems like a story for another day. It’s been great fun watching her imagine, create, and play with these things!

Walmart will deliver groceries to your car!

Walmart has a new service: Walmart Grocery. It’s awesome! For no additional cost you can order online and they’ll bring your groceries to your car. I used it twice in the first week it started here in Edmond.

I just signed in at walmart.com/grocery and found what I wanted. The one catch is that there is a minimum $30 order required. After filling my cart I selected a 2-hour time slot to pick up my stuff. They called me 15 minutes before it was ready and asked that I call back 10 minutes prior to arriving. The reserved parking for pick-up was easy to find.

The first time my order included some toiletries, cans, pasta, eggs, ground beef, and lettuce. When they brought it out to my car they showed me the ground beef, checked the eggs, and noticed a black spot on the lettuce so went back inside to get a better one. They loaded it into my trunk and gave a gift bag, smile, and thank you.

The second time the employee brought me a cold bottle of water in addition to the gift bag. It was great! She even told me to stay in the car while she loaded the trunk.

Though there are other places I’d rather shop this service is awesome for times that I don’t want to take a curious 4-year-old inside with me – like when it’s raining or really cold, or when the store is full of Christmas displays and toys catching her attention everywhere.