Cabin Fever

I am not one who has a great need to "get out" usually. I can go for days without leaving the house and be quite content. Pete loves it when I go a whole week without going anywhere but the library! You can't spend money if you don't leave the house- okay, that's not really true since I do shop online. However it's not tempting to buy things I don't need if I don't go to stores. Well, it's been cold and we've got a good bit of snow so I admit, yesterday I NEEDED to get out! We had some guys here putting some recessed lighting in the basement so I had to move all the toys into the living room and the kids couldn't be down there all day. The kids have all this pent up energy and they are starting to really antagonize eachother! So yesterday I was going to take them to one of those indoor inflatables places so they could jump and run and release some of this energy that has nowhere to go. We had a snowstorm Thursday night which caused all sorts of closings- including the jumping place. I sent them out to play in the snow for awhile, but that didn't last long. For Maddie it lasted 5 minutes because the snow was too deep and she cried "I cared, mommy." Some friends invited us to their church soup supper and then to their house afterwards so we had that to look forward to, but 4:30 couldn't come soon enough, naps didn't happen, and Peter was whining that he was bored because he couldn't go in the basement. Then I suddenly had an idea that sort of cheered up our afternoon. I remembered that the kids had each gotten $10 from Great Grandma Fennema for Christmas. Usually it goes in their banks right away, but I decided to go to Target and let them each spend $5. So we headed to the store, parked, and I traipsed through the snowy parking lot carrying Ella with my 3 other ducklings following and all holding hands. We got the usual stares (pity? confusion? don't know), as we slowly made our way to the door and slowly got settled in a huge cart where 3 out of 4 can be safely contained. Then we made our way to the toy aisle where (surprise surprise) they all picked a matchbox sized "Cars" vehicle. They have been obsessed with playing with those lately! And I'm happy for them to get anything that provides hours of wholesome entertainment. We don't even have the movie (they have seen it before) mostly because I don't like that although it's rated G, it has a naughty word in it- but they seem to be able to make up plenty of their own stories with the cars. So we took their choices to the checkout where I allowed each of them to pay separately so that they could proudly pay with their own five dollar bill! (More stares as people probably wondered why I was wasting time letting them pay for their own). Then we left Target to meet our friends for supper.