SUCKER PUNCHED

MONDAY, MARCH 29, 2010 Being Monday I picked up Bailey and Jayden from school. For a change they weren’t walking together though Bailey and Gracie weren’t too far behind. Bailey and Gracie are best friends and as usual, when Bailey left Gracie to get into my car they yelled their good-byes back and forth several times. Gracie is a very cute Hispanic girl. When they got in the car I asked them where they wanted to go. Jayden wanted to go to Wal-Mart. He wanted to look at the lazar sabers. Bailey didn’t want to go at first and put up a fuss but soon changed her mind. When we got to Wal-Mart, the two of them headed right for the toy department. There were three different types/sizes of Star Wars lazar sabers and I suggested I could maybe afford the least expensive one. Jayden of course wanted the most expensive. It was the Star Wars, The Clone Wars Force action Lightsaber with a spring action blade and was about eighteen dollars. With a long face he said something like, “I guess I could save my money and come back next year and get it.” About that time Bailey came around the corner with a set that included a Barbie Doll and several puppies. There was a syringe for putting water into the puppies, and when you do the puppies "pee" on some special paper which turns yellow to look like the real thing. Guess what; it was about eighteen dollars also. I felt like I had been sucker punched. Finally Jayden came up with a solution. He said, “Does Grandma take care of the money?” “Yes.” “Tell Grandma we tortured you.” Little did he understand that, that is pretty much what they did, or I guess I should say that that is how I would have felt if I hadn’t thought it was so darn funny. They had me and we bought them. When they first got in the car after school, Jayden turned to me and said, “Lucky Charms hit me in the jaw and made me bite my tongue.” I gave him a “Huh!?” kind of look and he explained that “Lucky Charms” is the name of one of his friends. They were playing around and I guess Jayden was letting “Lucky Charms” hit him in the stomach. This time “when I took a deep breath, he hit me in the jaw and I bit my tongue.” I am assuming the taking the big breath made him bend over or at least that is what I used to do. (When I was in high school my stomach was so strong I used to let everyone hit me as hard as they could.) I asked both Jayden and Bailey if there was anything new in their love lives. They both said no, but later Jayden said, “I like a sixth grader. I’m only in the forth, that’s two grade higher than me.” I told him, “Yes, but only about one year older.” He said, “Oh, yea.” I asked him how they met and he said that she is the girl that visited, “My Dad’s (Primary) class.” He went on to say, “She is a drama queen-big mouth!” (I did remember him mentioning her being in his primary class last week.) Later this evening I called to talk to Jayden to make sure I had the story straight. He asked my why. I cautiously said “To put in my journal so you can read it when you get older.” I thought I was safe doing it that way but he surprised me and said, “Put it in your blog so my dad can read it.”

CAFE RIO for Lunch

Monday, March 29, 2010 Today Greg and Niki and Alexa and Gavin met Jim and Corey and me at Café Rio on 123rd for lunch. For my part it was quite by accident. I had gone to Southtowne Mall to walk and afterwards drove into the boy’s parking lot since it was nearby. I was sure they would all be gone to lunch since it was after twelve o’clock. As I was driving by their building, Greg and Corey were just walking out the door and waved me down and invited me to eat with them. We had a good visit. Alexa and Gavin, as usual ate very little, and as usual, Gavin was down out of his highchair and running around though today he stayed near our table.