Well, I Was A Little Busy

I know I promised this awesome post for tonight but I've been a little busy. For some reason, known only to starry eyed grandparents, I brought my two four year old grandsons to spend the night with me Friday night.

Josiah is on the left. He's Karli's son. 

Aiden is on the right. He belongs to Michelle.

Look at them sitting there like they're all innocent, sweet, little candy-coated boys. They actually do pretty well together, much better than when they're with their sisters.

Friday night they were totally excited because I left some of the Christmas tree decorations for them to put on the tree.

They giggled and snorted looking at each ornament. They handled each nutcracker, candy cane and colorful ball carefully as they found the perfect spot to hang them. Everything ended up in one 18" area on the tree about 3' up. There's no way I can move any of it. They worked so hard and were so proud of their creation. It's absolutely perfection for a Nana. I smile each time I look at it.

Saturday is where it got tricky. I haven't done a pair of toddlers in 25 years. I found out why yesterday. Two four year olds, two booster seats, Starbucks, Target, the mall, the gun shop and torrents of rain made for an "interesting" day.

The boys were good, but they were boys. That means there was giggling, kicking, squealing and boogers for several hours.

Finally we got to the stop we were all looking forward to: the gun shop.

The boys walked slowly by each glass case memorizing all of the cool guns. They picked out what they wanted when they were "grown up." I grabbed about a dozen boxes of ammo and had the guy show me several pistols.

After the boys had looked in each case they noticed the animals. First was a bear. They wanted to touch it so badly, but they were both a little scared, after all it had TEETH! The boys slowly approached the stuffed bear. Each one tried to get the other one to touch it first. For some reason they fixated on its tongue. Just when Josiah got his nerve up and touched the tongue, the man behind the counter growled. Both boys jumped about three feet straight up and back. The man chuckled, the boys were near tears but were too brave to show it.

Next Josiah spotted the "reindeer." OMG! REINDEER! It's Christmas time and there were reindeer heads, with no bodies, on the walls! What did Santa do? Were the reindeer bad? How was Santa going to fly with only half of his reindeer force?

That's when Josiah decided that Santa didn't go to gun shops because they had no fireplaces, so those couldn't be his reindeer. The boys seemed happy at that explanation, but they kept one eye each on the "reindeer."

We paid for the ammo I'd chosen and petted a buffalo head on the way out. The boys walked a little taller with a little more machismo, after all they had just toured a "real" gun shop and had come face to face with a real bear!

They went home Saturday afternoon and Nana went to bed.

This morning was strangely quiet having the boys gone, a little too quiet. I grabbed up my gun bag, all of the handguns, a crap load of ammo and drove to the gun club. Some day, when they're a little older, I'll have two grandsons at my side.