What a fun-filled two days...

I have had a wonderful two days, but I am exhausted. I got up Thursday and headed over to pick up my grandchildren, Garret & Alexis (11 & 5). We met up with my niece, her husband and their 2 boys (12 and 9) from West Virginia. We decided to spend the day at Splash Country. Now, I must start off by saying that the 5 year old is itty bitty and weighs about 29 pounds. Whoever named a Lazy River by that name, never had to walk the entire length of it pushing a 5 year old in her float....3 TIMES!! And whoever thought it was a great idea to have all kinds of water falls, slides and water guns in a knee deep pool and let the parents rest in chairs around it, never had to follow a little pony tail all over the pool to keep an eye on her. And I'd like to meet the brain that created a wave pool for fun that has waves the force of a tsunami that can knock an 11 year old right out of his innertube. And most importantly, I'd like to know how, after covering 25 acres of wet, wild family fun, do they expect you to walk all the way back to your car. I think they should install those moving sidewalks like they have in Ripley's aquarium. Or at least run golf carts for you to hitch hike your way to the gate. But I had a blast and so did the kids. We survived. Yes, we survived but only to endure more torture today. We went to Tanger Outlet Mall for the tax free weekend sale to get school shoes and school clothes. To my delight, I have discovered that Alexis shops like me and Garret shops like Papaw. We went to 4 different stores (all on different ends of the complex) to try on no less than 5 outfits at each store only to discover that they had the top in the right size, but not the bottoms or vice versa. We finally ended up with a few new outfits that we liked and we were able to concentrate on Garret. He wanted to go to Nike first. He was very firm about going to Nike. So we walk in. There is a table with T-shirts on sale. He says "I want this one, this one, and this one. Let's look at shorts." We moved to the shorts rack and he says, "These will go with this shirt. I like these with the blue shirt and I want these for the white shirt." Then to my dismay, he says, "Okay I'm done. We can go." Same thing with the shoes. He found a pair, he tried them on, we bought them. For Alexis, we went through about 8 different pairs that she thought she liked, but none "looked right." She ended up falling in love with white Keds. At the end of our two beautiful days together, I took them home. My body is feeling these last two days, but I feel like I held up with great stamina for a grandma. I've went for two straight days like I was 16 again. Go, go, go. As we walk up to the porch, I noticed Garret's suitcase is showing a little wear and tear and I said "I need to get you a new suitcase pretty soon." He wanted to know why and I said that it was getting a little old and he could use a new one. He topped off our time together by sweetly smiling up at me with love in his eyes as he said, "Mamaw, you don't replace something just because it gets old. We haven't got rid of you yet, have we?" Out of the mouth of babes....