Banking

On Good Friday, we changed plans last minute.  When I asked the kids if they wanted to meet friends at the zoo instead of going to the opera performance at the library, it was unanimous. And it ended up having a great payoff.

But while scrambling to pull ourselves together, the first excited request was to play on the playgrounds. The second was whether or not they could get their faces painted. I've heard this request for several years now. And they've always heard a response of "Not today. We don't want to waste our money on that."

However, on Friday Vanessa asked if she could use her own money from her piggy bank. "It's my money so I should be able to spend it on face painting if I want. Right?" She ran to see if she had enough. She found a twenty-dollar bill and asked if she would get back change. Then she worried for Zane, so they ran back upstairs to check his cash box. Indeed they both had enough, so from that point they were banking on it . . .

Vanessa chose a half crown design and Zane wanted to be a zebra. The lady finished Vanessa quickly and Zane was more patient than most 3-year-olds -- he didn't budge the whole time the lady painted. Others in line were amazed at how still he was. There were comments that he could perform as a statue or a mime.

The kids were also very good to keep their face painting secret until after playing and eating with friends, knowing that we can't expect everyone to break their bank on something like that.

We didn't see many animals on Friday, but we all had a blast visiting. Indeed you can take that to the bank.

The weekend ended up being good in many ways.  Upon returning home from a solo trip to the store Saturday evening, Vanessa ran to me screaming she had just found a 4-leaf clover in the backyard. Since we've had a couple prior experiences where she was mistaken and a leaf from another clover was stuck together, or one leaf had split in two, I wasn't banking on it. But then Vanessa handed it to me. . . . and she had!

She took me to the backyard to show me the patch where she found it. I asked her to tell me about it. She said in one breath "I just knew there would be one here so I bent down and started looking and it didn't take me long at all when I found it!"

What was even more amazing to me was that the teeny tiny leaf had grown in a way that it was actually overlapping the one to its right. We had to be extra careful to press it in a book. Daddy said he thought the same thing I did, that she must be mistaken. Vanessa laughed her way to the bank.