The good news was that I didn't have to parallel park on the ramp, but that was because I was at the bottom of it. I had a long walk up the incline. I decided to wear Anna in the Baby Bjorn and held both the older girls hands to get to the entrance of the store. When we got to Costco, I lifted both Jillian and Faith into the cart, while wearing Anna, not a light endeavor! I was exhausted by the time I walked into the door and it was a madhouse inside. I decided right at that moment, I was canceling my membership. But I had worked so hard to get inside that I refused to not get what I originally had come for. So, we bought a few items, went to the membership desk, cancelled our membership (they asked me for the reason of my cancellation, I said PARKING), and made the trek back to the van.
Once we got to the van, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to best get the girls and food out of the cart without the cart rolling away from me. I somehow managed to hold onto the cart and get Anna out of the Baby Bjorn and place her in the car seat. Then I moved onto the next task of getting the food out of the cart when this elderly gentlemen came up to me and asked me if he could help by holding onto the cart for me. I was so thankful and relieved for his help and told him so. The rest of the unloading process went much more smoothly because of his help and not only that he offered to take my cart back for me!!!
I had been dreading figuring out how I was going to get the cart back to the store. We have been taking a parenting class called "Parenting God's Way" and we have been learning how to respect the preciousness of others and a part of that is leaving things better than we found them. This of course includes returning the cart to the store. I thought to myself, I may be a HORRIBLE example to my children today and tip my cart on the side, like all the others cars have done before me. But thankfully I didn't have to be a bad example (or tempted to be one), because of the kindness of this stranger! I told the man that he had blessed my day and thanked him profusely! When I returned the van to buckle all the kids into their seats, Jillian told me he was a nice man.
She then said, "I wish I could marry him." A second later, she added, "But I can't." I was interested to hear the logic of why she thought that couldn't marry him (to me it was clear that a 4 year old shouldn't marry a nearly 70 year old man), and asked her why she couldn't.
She only responded by saying, "I don't know."
But then she added, "Mom, I wish I had a brother, so I could marry him."
I was a little surprised that she thought that people could marry their siblings and told her, "You can't marry your brother."
She of course asked, "Why?" I decided it wasn't best to get into the dangers of intermarriage of close relations and the genetic makeup of their children and instead decided to tell her, "its against the law."
She said, "oh... but then why did you marry your brother, mommy?"
I was astounded and told her, "Daddy isn't my brother!"
Once again, she was shocked! I asked her if she remembered that Grammie and Grandad were my parents (my step-mom and dad) and that Mimi and PawPaw were daddy's mom and dad. I told her, mommy and daddy have different parents.
And then she added, "and your mommy is in Heaven with God." (Jillian feels blessed to have three grandmas).
I said, "that's right."
Then we continued and she said, "Oh yeah... well then how did you get married if you didn't know each other."
For Jillian, she can't imagine a time that her mommy and daddy didn't know one another. :-)
I said, "Well we met each other at college, fell in love, got married, and now we have a family together!"
Marriage and family are truly a beautiful creation from the Lord.
Reading this has to be my favorite part of today. LOVE IT!
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