There are only a few weeks left for Holly to finish up the illustrations for her third children’s book. She’s been working mostly during the evenings after the boys have gone to bed. But on Saturday, I gave her some dedicated time during the day to get a bit done totally boy free.
At noon, I packed up two bags of recycling, readied some bills for mailing, grabbed a box full of donation toys, strapped the kids in the car, and headed south.
Our first and closest stop was the local thrift store. Yes, we have one. We dropped off our box of forgotten toys and gossiped a bit with the landlord’s girlfriend. Oh the drama. 20 or so minutes later we drove off with two pairs of sweatpants for Gavin, a awesome Gap winter hat for Leif, a few toys and a Star Wars book with a skull on the cover that Gavin won’t look at.
From there we made a quick pitstop at the post office to drop some letters in the mail before stopping at Hasegawa’s to take care of our recycling. The three of us all took turns inserting the diet coke cans into the machine, watching the door close, and listening to the machine crush the cans. Leif was very interested in the going ons. He helped grab cans out of the bag and even putting them in the machine. Oh what fun. We earned $4.05. That plus the $2 in my wallet was enough to buy a musubi, lemonade, and Life Savers gummies for Gavin along with a Milky Way for Leif. Recycling is good.
Here is where I had t make a decision. What to do next. By this time, the sun had finally come out and warmed us up a bit. Gavin had a bathing suit in the trunk for some reason so I decided to take a trip down to seven pools to see if we could do some swimming. Besides, if anything, it’s a beautiful drive. So that is what we did.
After 20 or so minutes of driving, we neared the parking area. Lief started to look a bit sleepy right as we were pulling up. If he could only hold off a few minutes longer. I pulled up to the little booth at the entrance and after a 5 minute spiel about how the waterfalls are all down to a slow trickle and there is no swimming due to stagnant water, she then asked me for a $10 parking fee. I only had $5. But who wants to pay $5 to hike with a sleeping baby to a trickling waterfall that you can’t even swim in? Not me. So I let Leif pass out and we turned around to take a slow scenic trip home.
It was only 2 pm when we arrived home. Holly worked for 2 straight hours on her illustrations. Good progress. She was glad to see us back home. The rest of the day was a nice relaxing one full of happy children, yummy snacks, tv, and beer.
I love days like that.