Christmas Shopping With Aunt Josie

For Christmas, because Joanna is in town, we thought it would be fun if she went shopping with the kids to let them pick out what they wanted for their gifts from her and Kirk.  I had time today, and she doesn't leave until tomorrow, so it worked out great.  We went to Toys 'R Us in separate trips. We first took Hannah and Clara, and they are both not really yet aware that you can ask for things in stores and your parents can potentially get them for you.  So they didn't really get it, and we had to hold up things for them to gauge their response.  Clara, though, spotted a little Care Bear (Share Bear, who is purple) and decided that she loved it, so that settled that.  Hannah (riding in the cart, of course), showed at most moderate interest in most things, but we were looking for more of a reaction than that.  We then showed her Crocky (a baby version of Peter Pan's Tick Tock the Croc), and she beamed and immediately reached out to get it and give it a hug, so we knew that was the one.  When we took Joshua, he wanted everything it the store ("That's my favorite [whatever toy he's looking at]!").  We had to focus him on toys that were in his age range.  He was excited when he saw the section of Home Depot toys, and we settled on a landscaper set with a wheelbarrow, rake, shovel and lawnmower.  We then went back to pick up the girls and then went to lunch.  It was a fun time, and the kids really liked spending time with Aunt Josie.

I've had to replace a few of the pickets on the fence between us and our neighbor to the west, but yesterday I noticed that three more were broken.  We suspect that Joshua is responsible for this, as we saw him shaking one of the broken pickets.  They are old, so it wouldn't take much abuse to crack one.  Either way, I had bought some extra pickets last time anticipating this would happen, so I got three of them, and asked Joshua if he wanted to help knowing it's the type of thing he would love.  I had him put on his safety goggles from his construction worker outfit (and I put on mine out of solidarity) and get his toy saw and toy hammer.  Together we worked to cut the pickets to the right height and to pull off the old ones and hammer on the new ones.  I also had a talk with Joshua about being gentle with the fence, so hopefully I don't have to do this too often.