Ran away

Yesterday, I took the day off work to spend with the girls. Since it's March Break, they've been cooped up in daycare all week while I've been working. So yesterday we ran away. We ran away from chores, we ran away from cooking, we ran away from daycare, and we had so much fun.

We got up early, and, with Connie from next door and her two girls, we drove to Smith's Falls and toured the Hershey Plant. We'd been there before, but always on weekends when the plant was idle -- you could take the tour and look down at all the interesting machinery, but it wasn't being used. Well, yesterday it was in full working mode. We saw the satiny glistening chocolate being mixed with almonds and poured into molds. We saw the 'faulty' bars being removed from molds, and the cooled, set bars shooting down the conveyer to be packaged. We also saw an endless stream of syrup bottle being filled and capped. The girls were spellbound.

Then came the shopping part. You can get chocolate really, really inexpensively there. I stocked up on chocolate chips for baking, and splurged on various things, and $15 bought so much chocolate that the grocery bag ripped on the way to the car from the weight. They always give you something free at the checkout, a chocolate bar or some mini-O'Henrys, but yesterday the give-away was a half-pound bar of milk chocolate with almonds per person. And the girls counted as people. I think I have enough chocolate now.

Then we headed back to Smith's Falls for lunch. This was a mistake. I swear, the counter staff of the Smith's Falls Burger King was very, very slow, in all senses of the word. Connie and I stood in line cracking jokes while they screwed up order after order ahead of us. The girls were oblivious, as they were all sitting in a booth playing together.

We drove home and ended up the afternoon with some interpretive dance to Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (Leah's "Funeral for a Friend" was particularly moving, by the way) and then pb&j for supper followed by a bath and a game of "Tragically Orphaned Teenage Manicurists" (my name for it, not the girls'; they just call it "Nail Salon") -- wherein we are teenagers whose parents have died and we support ourselves with our nail salon -- Leah's invention and favourite pretend game of all time. So today Rachel's nails are respelendent in Sandalwood Frost while her toes are Sapphire Blue. Leah's nails are alternating Silver Glitter and Tequila Sunrise. Mine are bare, as I couldn't decide.

It was a great day, and somehow makes being in work today bearable. That, and the thought of all that chocolate waiting at home ...