Thursday Thoughts on Taking the GRANDdaughter to the Grocery

Remember what it was like to take small children grocery shopping? When my five children were young I might have taken one or two with me to the store, but never all of them at once. If you have children I know you understand why. Just thinking about those years now makes me tired.

Yesterday I took my GRANDdaughter to the store and evidently one child at a time is all I can handle now. It wasn’t Abby’s fault, she was sweet as she could be. I guess if I had to blame anyone for what happened it would be three of my sons.

They frequently borrow my Honda Pilot (which I don’t mind) and if you have teenagers you will know why they borrow it (hint-they don’t have to put gas in it). The day before our trip to the grocery they had driven it to the gym to shoot basketball.

The Great Grocery Store Adventure

One thing that’s different about taking your grandchildren to the store versus taking your children is that when they “Nana, can I have a toy….please?” I can’t resist. When my children asked (remember there were five of them) I almost always said “no” because if I had said “yes” I couldn’t have paid for my groceries.

Picture this…Abby is in the grocery cart playing with her new hot wheels car wash toy (she passed up the dolls in favor of the car) and the groceries are all in the cart with her. I push the cart to my Honda Pilot and open the back so that I can put the groceries in. When I opened the door not one, not two, but three basketballs roll out and go bouncing through the parking lot.

I took off running and managed to catch two of them. I threw them in the car and ran after the third. By the time I caught the third the first two had managed to roll back out and took off down the parking lot again. The second time I was a little smarter and put them in the back seat instead of just throwing them back in the rear of the vehicle. Abby and several people in the parking lot were laughing hysterically.

By the time I got Abby and the groceries back in the car (she managed to lose a flip flop during the adventure and I had to retrieve it from under the vehicle) I felt like I’d run a marathon.

I wiped the sweat off my brow and fastened my seatbelt for the ride home.

“Nana,” says a sweet little voice from the back seat. “Can we go to the store again tomorrow? That was fun.”

I smiled and told her I’d think about it (and if you have children or grandchildren…you know what that means)