The Daily Hailey

We kept our Father’s Day celebration pretty casual this year. Casual but really enjoyable 🙂 It suited our family SO well! Brady and I both agreed afterwards that it had been a super lovely evening.

After naptime, we got everyone dressed and left for the city. Of course, we couldn’t just go for recreation, so we stopped for groceries first. Haha! We hit Costco and stocked up on ALL veggies and fruit, ALL milk, a box of diapers, and a whole bunch of other things.

While we were in line, I saw a woman looked very flustered, standing with her two kids and their cart. She was trying to flag down an employee, and her son was wailing. The moment an employee arrived at her cart, she said something quickly to her and took off with her son. When they were closer to me, I could tell her son had thrown up. Once she was just about ready to turn down the little hallway to the bathrooms, she seemed to have a realization and hesitated. Didn’t know whether to go to the bathroom or go back. And guys, I just felt for her. She seemed so frustrated, and so distraught. So I took a risk and ran over to her. I offered to take her son to the bathroom and wash him off. She said she didn’t know where her daughter was, and I know that fear of not having an eye on all of your kids! I told her I have five kids, and she can trust me. She hesitated hard, but did end up letting me take him. My heart was SO happy that she trusted me enough to let me help!! I walked him to the bathroom and tried to reassure him that I was going to help him. He was probably two years old and didn’t say much back. He was obviously upset, too, and feeling sick. The bathroom paper towel was out, so I found a loose roll of toilet paper and just went to down, wetting a ball and wiping him off a bit, over and over again. His mom was very close behind, and met us in the bathroom, but she was on the phone, relaying the events of her sons sickness to someone, and was still just SO flustered. I helped finish him up, and by the end of it all, he was giggling and playing with the hand dryer. Crisis averted!! It felt good to have another mom trust me and accept my help! Whew!

On our way out of the parking lot, we saw a man pushing a big orange flatbed cart lose, and a bunch of his groceries got away on him. Several flats of drinks and chips were on the ground, and he was in a bit of a high pressure area to be holding up vehicles. Brady quickly whipped our van to the side and rushed out to help him. Meanwhile, another vehicle pulled up in a way to shield them both from oncoming traffic while they reloaded his cart. Again, crisis averted.

I’ve got to say, it felt great to help people, and to have people willingly accept our help. Not telling these stories to toot my own horn, but to remember 🙂 Nice stories.

We were at Costco for longer than usual that shop, because I had decided, for our Father’s Day supper, we should have a picnic! A picnic with Costco hotdogs! If you’ve gotten a hotdog at Costco before, you know its a really yummy hotdog for super duper cheap, and its really easy. All the condiments are there and ready, you get a drink, and its just a simple process. I’ll tell you now, it is less simple when you’re a family of seven.

Hahahaha! My goodness… Brady took on the task of dressing the hotdogs, though to be fair, I thought he was just going to get some little cups of ketchup and mustard. He got the way harder job by opening up each hot dog and putting stuff on them. I filled the cups – pop for Brady and I, and water for the kids. It was a bit of an undertaking, but two boxes of supper later, we were set! (Spoiler alert: We ran out of food before we were all full. Ten hot dogs next time.)

My goal had been to take the kids to the bandshell by the river for supper. Not super picnicky, but contained and in a way that I could see them all the whole time. (Yes, I’m a tad overprotective since our shakedown at the lake. Please don’t judge me!) There were people on the stairs of the bandshell when we drove by, but once we had parked and headed in that direction, it was no longer occupied.

It was virtually impossible to get a good picture of everyone, lol! I tried individuals, rather.

Solly didn’t want his picture taken…

But he rallied 🙂

Marginally better, lol!

Everyone ate super happily, and drank a TON of water. What is it about a new cup that makes it more fun?? Lol! Seriously though, they enjoyed themselves SO much. After they finished eating, they raced around in circles, played tag, and made games around which section of the concrete was lava and where you could and couldn’t be tagged. They could’ve stayed out there forever, but it eventually had to end. Bedtime was drawing near, and since it hadn’t been a smooth day for napping, we knew the risk of everyone sleeping on the drive home was pretty real. But NO ONE DID!! Thanks to that, bedtime was pretty smooth and everyone went to bed happy, and slept easily. It was awesome.

Seriously, what a cute little picnic with a cute little family. We had a great evening, just hanging out together. We kept it low pressure, and very much our style. We loved it. We’ll have to make this a bit more of a common occurrence. It was WAY more fun than usual fast food, and cheaper, too, which never hurts.

I hope you all had lovely weekends!