First Day of School and a trip to Lowe's

First of all I would like to wish my cousin Spencer a Happy Birthday. I reserve the right to withhold his actual age since it would make me feel old. When I started college, Spencer was a wee little guy in preschool. Now, he is all grown up and working in one of my favorite places, New York City.

Haley and Holden both survived the first day of a new school. Holden seemed to have had a much better day than Haley did. When asked what the highlights of the day were, he said that he made a new friend (although he can't remember his name) and he got to play on a much bigger playground than he had at his last school. On top of that, he didn't feel so alone because there were two other kids in his class that had also moved to Charleston this summer. Haley wasn't so excited about her first day. She couldn't get her lock open to put on her locker so she had to bring it home and her bus was 45 minutes late bringing her home today. On top of that Haley said the cafeteria food was awful and when she says that about food, it must have been really bad. On a good note, she has homeroom with her old best friend (from third grade) and science with our old next door neighbor.

So today while the kids were in school, I was able to get out and run some errands because my dad is in town helping me out. My dad took Harrison to Lowe's to buy some light bulbs for our garage and some other miscellaneous stuff. Apparently Harrison saw some things he liked as well because this afternoon as I was walking to the bus stop, he pulled a key chain out of his pocket and said "Here mom, I got this for you at Lowe's. They were giving them away." I looked over the key chain and didn't see a barcode so I figured that maybe they were giving them away. When we got back home, Harrison and Holden ran inside while I was out in the garage with my dad. Holden comes flying back out of the house with a handful of nuts and says look what Harrison had in his pocket. So come to find out the key chain wasn't being given away. And of course neither were the nuts. Harrison had become a shoplifter at the ripe old age of 5.

After getting myself together (because it was kind of funny), I went inside to talk to him about the seriousness of stealing. I tried to explain how it was wrong and how God didn't like people who stole and when that didn't seem to be working, I explained that people actually went to jail for stealing. He told me not to call 9911 (we can't get him to leave off the extra nine) to have him arrested and put in jail.

My dad decided that he was going to take Harrison back to Lowe's to return the items that he stole and apologize to them. While standing in the return line at Lowe's, Harrison decided he had to go to the bathroom (which of course he does everytime we go in some store). So they head all the way to the back of the store. When they are walking back up front, Harrison was skipping and acting as if nothing were wrong so my dad reminded him why they were there. Harrison looked up and said "Papa, if you tell that woman to take me to jail you are going to be in big trouble." Then he said, "Would you be sad if they took me away?"

When they got back to the return desk, my dad explained to the lady that Harrison had something to tell her. Harrison said "I accidentally stole something." The lady gave him and hug and thanked him for returning the stuff. I am not sure if it will happen again but at least for today I can hope that he learned his lesson. His blessing tonight at the dinner table was "God forgive me for stealing and making Lowe's unhappy."