Today was a fun day!

I'm writing with Alida sound asleep in the front pack, Kali playing with a friend in her bedroom and lots of happy sounds coming in from the fire ring outside where Jason is, along with lots of the youth and mentors from our church community.

I know that what I'm about to write won't be near as interesting to anyone else as it will be to me, but I feel like writing and I have the time and two hands to do so! If you would like to get the scoop on the details of today, read on. I gushed to Jason on the phone as I was heading back to Keezletown about what a fun day I was having. While it is not unusual for my days off to be fun it felt like this one contained a bunch of mini-miracles that made a very "normal" day extra special and fun. So here is the run down.

What made it so different than most Fridays of late is that it was not a Friday at home. I love being at home but the list had been growing of "in town" things to do, some of which involved Kali being along. And with Alida being just shy of 8 months, it seemed high time we try doing one of our "put all our errands together" days. We did. We had loads of fun!

Alida must have known it was going to be a big day. She sacked out on our chilly morning walk together around 8am and slept until after Kali was awake and chomping at the bit to leave (around 10am). That allowed me to get all the laundry on the line and get the car packed and ready to leave. After a milk snack for her we headed to our first destination.

Kali redeemed her Mr. J's gift certificate from her birthday and enjoyed a toasted sesame seed bagel with cream cheese for breakfast (and even bought two bagel bites so she could share one with me). Alida only got to gnaw on the wax paper that came with our bagel bites but she seemed pleased enough with that. We left the restaurant with a baker's dozen of bagels to enjoy in the coming days. A great bday present, even if it took us over 3 months to cash it in.

I was feeling optimistic about the day and about the moods of both gals and so, with Kali's enthusiastic support, we headed next to Gift and Thrift. Here is where a mini-miracle took place, or several. Kali loves to help me shop for clothes, but we haven't done it since I was pregnant. Most of my shirts are getting thoroughly stretched out from nursing a very energetic little gal who likes to tug on them from all angles. And it seems with each baby my body gets back to its pre-baby weight but everything feels like it has been positioned differently and so clothes just tend to not fit like they once did. So I've been eager to find a few things for work and Kali loves to pick which color rack I look at - today it was the purple rack (surprise, surprise). And when we had a handful of things from that one she wondered if we couldn't look at the brown rack too - which we glanced at briefly before taking our armload of items to the dressing room. Alida was quite interested in what was going on and she sat in the corner of the dressing room and accepted my offerings of hangers to play with while I attempted to rapidly try on the armload of things that Kali and I had picked out for me to try on. Here's the mini-miracle - I did not return a single pair of pants to the rack. Okay, it won't seem like a big deal to anyone who doesn't know 1. how much I hate to shop for clothing and 2. how often I try on many things and leave with one or none and 3. how pants seem to be the hardest of all. It was a 10-15 minute trip in and out and I left about $30 poorer and with 5 pairs of pants and 3 shirts to wear to work. Huge thanks goes out to Kali, who I have told I always want to have with me when I need to look for clothes. At the end of the day, she noted that that was her favorite stop right up there with Mr. J's and Dairy Queen.

We had heard back from Kali and Alida's aunt K who was excited to have us stop by her work. We enjoyed a short visit, allowing her co-workers to meet Alida and see Kali again, who had probably grown a foot or more since we last stopped by. It was also a good pit stop for a diaper change and a milk snack for Alida. Thus far (and for the rest of the day) there was little to no fussing in the car, despite many ins and outs. Kali provided great entertainment!

From there we went to Finders Keepers in search of organic food at discounted prices, particularly organic cheerios (Alida is at the cusp of being ready to do that cute pincher grab at a cheerio!). No luck on that but we found a bunch of other things for co-op day lunches for Kali, and managed to come out of there with two bags of stuff. The best find of the day was 66 good quality quart bags for $1.45. Jason had added that to my list last evening when he found we were nearly out and there was venison ready to grind and freeze. Kali wondered if I really needed four boxes.

After another milk snack for Alida and some organic gummy fruits for Kali we were on our way to Sharp Shopper. I was proud of myself for hoisting a 50lb bag of prairie gold flour into the cart with a baby in the front pack (as well as then hoisting it into the car and then from the car into our pantry). You do what you have to do! Alida was starting to bang her head against me and "talk" loudly in Sharp Shopper. She didn't get upset, just vocal about the fact that she was part of the shopping crew and had some opinions to offer. We left Sharp Shopper with more than two bags and definitely more than $30 poorer. But we are well stocked with quick lunch items and while neither place had organic cheerios we found plenty of other things that made the drive feel worth it. And even if we hadn't found much of anything, we were thoroughly enjoying each other's company. I had almost forgotten how absolutely fun Kali is to do errands with. I marvel being in a store with her and how pleasant she is and how much she likes to help me look for things and how she really never asks me to buy things. She was so happy when I tossed a bag of marshmallows into the cart - shocked, probably, that I was going to buy them (she had been talking so much about roasting marshmallows over the fire and I was not envisioning getting into making homemade ones anytime soon!).

We stopped at the store next door to see if they had paints and markers that Kali wanted to purchase with her money. They didn't have the brand she was looking for - she wanted good quality ones, I think - and so we headed out; this time after Alida nursed, fell soundly asleep, transferred into her carseat and settled in for a snooze. It was just going about as smoothly as I could have imagined.

Kali had one more free ice cream cone from the library's summer reading program so I made my last trip through the Dairy Queen drive thru (until next year's reading program most likely). Kali enjoyed her chocolate vanilla twist cone while we made our way to our final stop. Michael's Arts and Crafts had the markers and watercolor paints Kali was looking for. She excitedly took her purchase to the check out, only to find that while we thought she was short a few cents she was actually going to get change since they were buy one get the second half off (which wasn't advertised anywhere that I could see, so we were both surprised). That was the icing on the cake for Kali, as she had turned in all her change to me that morning for a $10 bill in hopes that that might mean she would be given change when she made her purchases.

Alida was awake again and with both girls buckled in one last time, we headed home. I had to chuckle as I drove along with Kali happily loudly humming Deck the Halls. It wasn't long before Alida joined in with her own variation. While I don't often feel giddy with happiness when I head home with a trunk load of things that I just spent money on (in "no buy november" of all months), I admit that it had been one very fun outing with my gals!

And the day continued pleasantly, with Kali drawing a beautiful tree picture with her new markers and then settling in to watch one of her new movies from the library. Meanwhile Alida and I got the laundry in off the line and put away, mixed up some green kale rolls and started baked lentils with cheese for dinner. Alida was so pleasant as I was unloading the car that it wasn't until the baby bjorn started to feel a bit damp that I figured it was time to check her diaper. She got an unplanned bath, which she was quite pleased about, since she was soaked through and through!

After enjoying dinner all together, Jason headed out to get the fire started for the evening gathering and to make the day even more special, Kali got to roast a few marshmallows before the guests arrived.

So that was my day in a nutshell (okay, so a rambly account of it - while I have time to write, I don't have time to do much editing since I'm currently one-handed again...) I even managed to have time to play a little ball with Alida this afternoon. Enjoy the clip below!