Camp B, Day Five: Car Day

Today's agenda was the very reason I decided to plan Camp B. In preparation for a day trip tomorrow, I scheduled an appointment for today to get long overdue new tires for my car. It was also high time for a deep clean on the interior, and since those two events alone require about three hours of waiting (which in kid-time is like three years), necessity invented Camp B, Day Five: Car Day.

The morning began with the boys playing happily in the car while I cleaned out its contents. Our trash went out early this morning, so our large, City-issued garbage can was an empty and waiting receptacle. We filled it to the top. I didn't photograph this transformation because a central purpose of this blog is its reflection of the beautiful things in my life--that mess was not one of them. While I cleaned, the boys played with the buttons, the radio, and the lights, which led to an explanation of the car's battery. Little b climbed over the seats and played with long lost toys that had been buried in the abyss. Big B was allowed to start the ignition, and we talked about how gasoline works to start a little fire in the engine. We also talked about what happens to the environment when that gas is produced and then released, and how smart people are making new kinds of cars to help fix that problem--and what we can do in our own lives to use our car efficiently.

We loaded up and went to the car dealership where my new tires were waiting. This very large, very shameless inflatable salesman told me we were going to have a good time.
And amazingly, he was right. We had to wait for just under two hours, but the boys were happy the entire time. I brought a bag full o' cars from the house, and we spent the first leg of the wait staging races, playing police, and having mock demolition derbies.Inevitably the boys wandered from the little lounge in the dealership to the showroom floor. There they found shiny new cars and engines to explore, and this very cool hands-on display of engine parts.
We were also able to go into the service office, from which we could see the cars on their lifts, getting new tires and oil changes. With four new tires and a belly full of a surprise lunch from Papa, we took our car to our favorite car wash. It's my favorite because we can walk to the mall from there, which has several distractions for antsy boys (and, let's be honest, a Starbucks for a dragging Mama). It's Big B's favorite because they give out free Dum-Dums to children. To each his own!
We arrived home in our sparkling pina-colada-scented car just before a friend from our alma mater visited with her beautiful children. We continued the car theme with an art project that Big B has enjoyed at preschool. I took six cars with tires of different shapes and sizes from the bag full o' cars, and squirted acrylic craft paint onto paper plates. They vroomed the cars into the paint and onto the paper. My friend and I were most impressed at how differently and beautifully they used their creative driver's licenses!
The little guys enjoyed the project too, and had four painted hands to prove it. The events of the day proved once again that cars and trucks are a great equalizer for my boys, and, I suspect, for boys everywhere. I was thankful for Camp B today, in a big way.