As I mentioned in a previous post, I told Elle we would go out and do something for her birthday since she didn’t really want anything in particular for a gift. She wasn’t sure what to do and we were throwing out ideas like “lunch,” “dinner,” “pedicures,” “go somewhere you’ve never been,” “try something new,” “shopping,” etc. She said she couldn’t decide so I suggested she could make a list and randomly choose one if they were all equally appealing to her. She messaged me one night, “I did eenie, meenie, minie, mo and it came up SHOPPING!” LOL Now I have no idea if shopping was her first choice anyway or if she really did randomly pick it but we decided we would go out on Monday since she had a school holiday. First we went to lunch at Jason’s Deli (after being rear-ended at a red light on the way….no real damage but scared us a little!), then she decided she wanted to go to the mall “since there might be sales for President’s Day.” She had some money from her Great Grandmother on her dad’s side, plus I was intending to buy her a little something. We wandered around, then she wanted to go to Bath and Body Works and get some hand sanitizers so we browsed awhile and she decided on a small case that can hang on her backpack and hold a sanitizer, and 5 mini sanitizers for $6 on sale. Bargain!
We left there and she said she’d seen some people with bags that said “Slush” on them so she was wondering what store that was. She said maybe makeup but she didn’t know if they had kids’ stuff. We found a directory and eventually realized the store name was “Lush,” not “Slush” and set off to locate it. Well, it was heaven on earth and we had a good time looking at all of the natural soaps, lotions, shampoos, bath bombs, lip balms etc. One of the staff did a demonstration of a bath bomb, something else that made the water bubbly, and another item containing bath oil. Elle was very impressed with the cake shampoo so she decided to buy some of that, along with a container to hold it, and also some minty lip scrub. A very successful foray into a new-to-us store.
Finally we drove to her favorite bookstore, Interabang Books, where she found Grenade by Alan Gratz, the author of Refugee, which she loved.
It was super fun to have a day with my girl, just hanging out and talking about all kinds of topics. I really do cherish these moments because I know it will not always be so easy to get to spend time with the grandkids as they get older and establish their own lives. Hopefully these are happy memories for her, too.
Postcards from Retirement 