Mother's Day in Dothan

We had the idea of packing a picnic lunch and taking it to Dothan to celebrate Mother's Day with Granny and Aunt Louise. We just drove down for the day and we got to listen to Dennis talk nonstop on both the way down and the way back. He picked out his own snack at the gas station, choosing candy corn and bug juice (a combination only a child could love). He was excited to see Granny and eat the picnic lunch at Solomon Park, and I was scandalized to discover that all the playground equipment has been removed from said park. We grew up playing on that playground, and we took Dennis there as a baby and couldn't wait til he was old enough to play on it himself. Now that he is, it's gone.

We had a nice lunch on a shady table and then we went to the oriental rug store to take lunch to Aunt Louise and Uncle George. Dennis then got to experience another time-honored grandchild tradition--playing in all the rugs! He jumped from stack to stack, played Magic Carpet, lined up firetrucks around a rug, played Avoid The Lava Pool, and played hide-and-seek among the large rolled up rugs on the floor. Watching him dance around on the rugs brought back lots of memories of my own childhood of doing the same, and he was SO excited to be there. He got so sweaty from running around full force for an hour that we didn't even bother going to a playground later.

He kept us entertained on the long car ride back. We stopped at Target to pick up Chloe's birthday gift and I bought a couple of pairs of socks from the dollar bin (Lightning McQueen socks and Oscar the Grouch socks) for Dennis as a surprise. He was thrilled and put them on his hands and began to use them as sock puppets. He sang songs to us, told us nursery rhymes, told Pop and me "Don't bother the driver!", and begged to go to Cracker Barrel (he got his way--we went there for supper). It was a long day but we had a good time!