2-12-09

A crafty family shopping trip ends with a Valentine ‘Secret’

This past Saturday, my family and I went down to Wilmington for the day. We did a little bit of running around, mixed in some visiting with family, and a little bit of playing.
The Children’s Museum was our first stop. This was a place that none of us have ever been. After a surprising $32 to get in, we ran behind Ethan as he quickly visited every station in the building for a fifteen second preview.
“Wow, look at this!” “Hey, Daddy, a cannon!” “Whoa, can I have this?”
Needless to say, he was excited.
Ethan is a very creative little boy and loves to make things and color. When he came to the room that housed a sixteen foot craft table covered in brown paper piled high with colored pencils, glue, glitter, markers and miscellaneous pieces of fabric, he stood at the doorway like a deer in headlights.
He stayed in that room for a solid two hours, he and Mommy made Valentine’s cards for every person in our family.
Ethan missed half of what the museum had, but he didn’t care.
After the craft fun, we ended up at Mayfair shopping center for a late lunch, or what I like to call an early dinner. We all had a great meal, mostly because we had a large table away from the rest of the crowd. This allowed us to let the kids play a little. What also helped was the fact that they were allowed to color on the table.
After our dinner, we walked around to do a little window shopping. One thing on our agenda was for Ethan and me to find Valentine’s presents for Mommy and Nash.
Ethan told me that while he was with Grahm and Pop-Pop (my mom and dad) the week before, they came to the same place and that he saw a stuffed dog at a store that he wanted to buy for Mommy.
He couldn’t remember the name of the store but he told me that “It was a pink and white store and there were “statues” and it was “girly.”
We ducked in and out of every clothing and gift store that I could find. I would ask, “Is it this one?” “Not this one,” he would respond.
Finally, I called my mom. “Where did you and Dad take Ethan that they were selling stuffed dogs?”
I can’t remember,” Mom answered. She listed off the places that she took him into and we tried a few of those.
I told Mom that we would just keep looking and thanked her for helping.
At that second Ethan blurted out, “Here it is! This is where Pop-Pop and I went”
We were standing at the festively decorated entryway into Victoria’s Secret.
Thanks, Dad.
Bryan Pinkey can be reached at bpinkey@nccox.com