Shopping Fun!

Yesterday, Mandy had scheduled an appointment to have her hair done -highlights, probably a little trim, the whole nine yards. She was due to be at the hairdresser's place at 9 a.m. but life sort of intercepted -or got in the way -whatever, you call it as you see it.

She went to leave only to find her car locked and the keys -well heck, they were there, in the darned car.

And her other set of keys? In Bill's pocket, on their way to Philipsburg as he'd already left for work by then.

So, she set out to try to find someone to help her get the car unlocked but no success in that so, off we went then to Philipsburg so she could retrieve her spare set from Bill.

Along the way to and fro though, some neat things happened for both of us. We acquired a new gas grill and she got some super fantastic buys on some clothes for the kids!

And would you believe it but no barcode scanners were involved in any of these transactions!

As we drove up the road from our house, we discovered our neighbor and good friend, Cindy, was have a "moving sale" as she and her husband are selling their house and moving elsewhere, sometime this summer after he retires. Hate to see them leave as they've been very nice neighbors and good friends to us since they moved here a few years ago.

One of the things we spied that Cindy had near the road was a nice gas grill for sale. And considering that Thursday nite when I was in the process of grilling some fish for supper, our grill almost went up completely in flames, the timing here couldn't have been better. We slowed down and Mandy called out to Cindy to inquire how much she wanted for the grill and when she said $30, we told her to put a "Sold" sign on that puppy and that we'd pick it up on our way back from town!

After getting the other set of keys, we started back towards home but Mandy spied a couple of yard sale signs and decided we needed to stop and check at least one of these out.

Darned good move there too as she left with two bags of clothes that included five pair of jeans for Maya of the brand that fit her really nicely -for a buck a pair -and those particular jeans retail for a minimum of $15 per pair! Plus she got a couple shirts and sweaters for Maya along with three pair of shoes too -two pair for Maya and a new pair of sneaks for Kurtis. At a quarter a pair for the shoes, how could one possibly go wrong there!

Back to our street, we completed the grill transaction and then, had fun trying to figure out how to get the grill from Cindy's house to ours. Lucky for us but another friend, Lois, happened along in her pickup truck and said no problem, that we could load it on her truck and she would deliver it to our door step.

Well, we got it loaded up okay but then I began to think how the heck are we gonna get it unloaded, down through the yard, remove the old grill off the deck and get this one up there? I happened to see Cindy's neighbor, Kevin, was home so I said something to her about getting Kev to come down and unload it and get things re-situated for us then and Cindy said she'd go over and tell Kev we needed his help.

By the time we got to my place and were standing around discussing things, here came Kevin to the rescue. He unloaded the grill with a bit of help from another neighbor (Joan) and got the old one off the deck and they got the new item up there in no time at all!

Don't you just love a happy ending like that though? Actually, don't you just love it when you know you have good friends and neighbors who are willing -and able -to lend a big hand for a couple of minutes of their time too?

Kev is a good friend of my son's and they have been fast friends since childhood. He's like having a second son to me if the truth be told. When my son joined the Army back in 1993 and after he was sent overseas to Germany, he knew that I was good friends with his buddy Kev and one time, in one of his letters, he asked me if I had put Kevin's name on the deed to the property as I think he was kind of worried that Kevin would be replacing him for me! No, not quite son, but it was a bit of a close race there. (Just joking -no one could ever replace my son even though there have been a few times when thoughts like that may have flown in and out -quickly -in my mind, when my son managed to pull some bonehead stunts now and again! LOL

I thought too I'd share a picture here with you today. This is the first picture I took yesterday with my NEW lovely little camera!

Somehow, I just thought it really fitting that the first picture I took with the new camera would be of my walking companion, our sweet little Sammy! Kurtis just strolled by and glanced at the picture, saying to me "Look at that silly little puppy!" (And isn't it just amazing how the little guy is stringing so many sentences together too considering a year ago at this time, he had only maybe 15 or 20 words, at most, in his vocabulary?)

Exciting times I'm living in these days, for sure. And with the summer ahead, filled I'm sure with lots and lots more yard sales and many walks, fun adventures with my kids and the grandkids, things are really looking great to me!