Monday Morning Musings - McDonald's Is My Kinda Place

So today is the grand opening for a new grocery store. They had this thing going on where the first 200 customers get a free bag of groceries worth $50 and 5 of the bags had a $500 gift card in them. Since were are living in such great economic times, my neighbor April and I, and Lori who overslept and missed it :( decided that we would get up at an unreasonable hour and go get a bag. April and I got there at around 5:30 AM. They were supposed to give the bags out at 6 (we thought). It was after 6 and we heard that they were going to give out wristbands at 8:00 and we had to come back after 10 when the store actually opened to get the bags. HELLO! Are they insane? Everyone was getting mad so they handed out the wristbands then and we still had to go back when they opened to get the bag. April and I were #191 and #192 so we just barely made it! We just now got back from getting our bags. There were 5 million people at that store. I am so not kidding. Neither of us got the $500 gift card, but we each got a $10 one. Woo. Hoo. Oh well. And the stuff in the bag. It was better stuff than I thought it would be. It's all stuff that I would never ever buy, but it will make a lovely dinner tonight. Bratwurst, chips and fresh salsa, artisan bread, cheese ball and crackers, sparkling cider, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and HELLO chocolate covered cinnamon bears - come ta momma. Oh, and a nifty little thing that hooks on the side of your pot and you can rest your spoon on it. Steve and my kids will be so excited about the Bratwurst because I never buy it because, frankly, the thought of it makes me want to puke. They however love it. It must be that German blood flowing through their veins. And those chocolate covered cinnamon bears, those are not going into the general food supply. Those are mine. In fact I busted them open right after I took the picture.

A few weeks ago Steve was out of town and I had the younger 2 kids in bed. Zac and Em and I were all sitting in my bed reading. I came across an obscure word in my book that normally I would just skip over. But seeing as how I had my handy dandy walking encyclopedia sitting next to me, I thought I'd give him a try. I asked Zac what the word meant. And he gave me the full definition with examples. What can I say? The kid is a genius.

Speaking of things Zac knows, on Saturday I was in the kitchen and I heard Steve running across the house yelling for Zac to come quick. I naturally had to see what was so important. I thought maybe there was another cat in our chicken coop or something. But no. It was some kind of military plane flying by. As Steve and Zac gaped up up the sky a little drool started to pool around both of their mouths. I asked what was so special about that plane and Zac told me what kind of plane it was and started listing off all these details and facts about it. He knew so much about it, I just knew he had to be making half of it up. So I asked Steve if those things were true. He said yes. Do boys just come out knowing that kind of stuff or what? I don't understand.

Emily was walking around the kitchen the other day with a little tiny bowl full of a drink. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I'm drinking like a cat! It's fun!"

On Saturday Addy and I drove down two houses (Sad I know. But it was freezing and raining and 2 houses down from us is really quite a long ways.) to pick up her friend to play. As soon as her friend got in the car and we started the long journey back to our house, I heard Addy in the backseat say, "Don't Drink that! It's Aubrey's spit!" What. the. heck!?! I have the strangest children. Seriously.

I put Addy in time out last week and after a few minutes she said, "MOM! I'm not getting any younger in here!"

On Saturday Emily and her friend Savana and Aubrey went to the dollar movie to see the Justin Bieber movie and Steve and I went to see The Kings Speech (Which I slept through the last 10 minutes of . I can't tell you how many movies I have watched all but the last 10 minutes of. And Steve is so helpful. I asked him what I missed and he was like "Uh, he gave a speech". ) Anyhoo. Our movie got out first so we were sitting waiting for the girls to come out. As soon as their movie ended the very first people out of their theater were these 3 pre-teen boys who were dressed exactly, EXACTLY like Justin Bieber. It was the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. I tried so hard to get my camera out and take a picture so I could do a blog post. But they were too fast for me. When the girls got out I asked them if they saw the JB look alikes. They said, "OH YES! THEY WERE SOOOOOO CUTE!" I thought it was funny, but now that I think about it....those might just be the most brilliant boys around. Going into a movie theater with a bunch of crazy girls, dressed like Bieber. Hmmmm....

When we were in line at the grocery store this morning, there was a guy standing behind us and he had just come from McDonalds. And he was saying that when he leaves there, he was going to another McD's. He told us you can text "secret32" to 733774 and you can get a free item off their value menu. He said he goes to a different McD's several times a day and gets free stuff all the time. He told us that one day he wanted to see how many different McDonalds he could go to in a day and get free stuff and he said he went to 22. TWENTY TWO! The weird thing is, he looked like a perfectly normal person on the outside.

And now, to leave you with a song from my repertoire. It is one of my children's favorites:

McDonald's is my kinda place, Hamburgers in my face, french fries between my toes, dill pickles up my nose. And don't forget those chocolate shakes, they come from polluted lakes. McDonald's is my kinda place, my kinda pla-a-aaaaaace!