Sam had a sleep over at his Grandma's last night which also meant that I had to drive over 3 bridges and 1 tunnel to get there. "Grandma lives too far away from us," I muttered to myself while inching along Taylor Way, not even close to the first bridge yet.
I'm such a long distance driving wimp. 45 minutes of consecutive driving is my max.
I think this is my mom's influence. Growing up, "going out for a while" meant driving 1km down the hill to the General Store. Going "ALL the way into town" was driving 10 minutes west along the highway, and if you had to go over the bridge...well, you might as well be driving to Seattle as far as my mom was concerned. I think she still panics at the thought of driving "over the bridge" to Vancouver. She is certain that it takes at least an hour more to get anywhere "over there" than it really does. Although, truthfully, it does for my mom, since she inevitably gets lost in such unchartered territory. Unless, of course, she is going to the airport. She knows how to get there. When we traveled as a family, we were always the first passengers at the gate, a few hours before our Domestic flight was scheduled to leave.
Now, I'm OK to drive over 2 bridges. I think the real challenge, for me, is driving distances with my kids. Never mind that Will can only stay still when he is sleeping, even more challenging is Sam's current obsession with counting. When I tell him it will be 15 minutes more, he wants to count it out...with you. I know for certain that it takes 482 seconds to drive from the school parking lot to our driveway. I know this, because we count how long it takes to get home together, 5 days a week.
Which brings me to the title of the post: car games. In an attempt to make the car ride "more funner" and to distract Sam from counting out loud (or asking me why the sun is following us), the kids and I have a little repertoire of car games we play.
The first is the Alphabet Game. We start with the letter A and we each have to come up with a word that begins with that letter. Sam is really good at P words, like poop and pee and penis. In fact, this is his response to most of the letters. When Jake plays with us, he thinks it is really funny to come up with something that totally confuses the kids like "gnarly" or "czar."
The second game is called What Goes Faster? I think the inspiration for this one came from one of Sam's many transportation books. It goes something like this: "What goes faster, Daddy's boat or an ATV?." Or another popular question is "what goes faster, Uncle Sean's car or Papou's red car?." It always ends in "what goes faster, Uncle Sean's car or rocket ship?."
The third game is the Opposite Game: I simply say a word and the kids take turns and tell me what the opposite is. I love hearing their responses. It took awhile for Sam to figure out what the heck was going on in this game. Still, when I ask what the opposite of high is? he might reply, "not high," which I suppose is quite true.
And the opposite of awake, is asleep which is what I need to be doing right now.
A few pictures, first (although I have NOT been taking photographs lately).
On a beautiful Thursday evening, Clara somehow persuaded Uncle Josh to come over and (half) wash my van...
I love Will's pointy finger. He does this a lot right now.
There was a whole lot of cleaning going on that night. Will is also helping Daddy clean the boat.
**I know I was muttering about the drive, but I'm still very thankful that Sam had a sleep over and a visit with Grandma. Thank you Grandma!! By all accounts, he had such a fun time. He even told me tonight he wishes he was still there. I guess I'm the same old...
**My husband is away and I miss him.
No comments:
Post a Comment