Beyond Ordinary! Blog Chalenge.

Apparantly Five minutes for special kids has suggested this challenge. Blog YOUR normal!

Normal for us has changed somewhat...however trying hard to keep normality for our family we are doing normal things and making normal plans!

Tuesday is Christina's birthday...we have a party planned and parties take shopping. So Saturday Christina and I took Rosie and Eve to Morrisons shopping. Now if you were in Morrisons Spalding on Saturday 23rd August 2008 you will possibly have met us....if you are particularly unfortunate you may have met us more than once!

Rosie and Eve are both wheelchair users...Rosie likes to jumo in and out of hers and likes to explore in her own way!

So the first couple of aisles were OK, veg, fruit cheese......ahhh at the cheese counter Rosie started to get itchy feet so we let her out. Tasting cheese is a serious business in our family we eat a lot of it but it has to be good, tasty cheese so we usually have to taste two or three to get it right! Rosie likes to be included in this and often feels sorry for those who arent and will offere a taste to other shoppers....they are often not too keen to taste it after she has! sucking the half chewed mess off her fingers she will usually choose someone with their back to her to wipe her fingers on...often they dont notice occasionally they pretend not to notice sometimes they let us know they noticed!

Off we go and Rosie pushes the trolley whilst I pull the trolley and push Rosie's wheelchair...the draw back to this option is I have my back to Rosie and occasionally she fancies what is in someone elses trolley so will head off in the opposite direction with a different trolley and I may not notice immeidately.....fortunately for the most part Christina and Eve are coming along behind us and Christina will redirect rosie...sometimes this works sometimes Rosie does her wonderful impression of a melted jelly! This Jelly impersonation is the one most likely to cause agitation in other customers. Imagine a busy shopping ailse...add two wheelchairs a trolley full of goods that keep jumoing off, one mother desperatley trying to control wheelchair and trolley and collect bits that have falen, one 9n year old having fun with her 4 year old sister in a wheelchair and add in one 16 year old throwing her self to the floor and spinning in circles on ehr back whilst grabbing at passing shoe laces and chewing them as the owner walks on narrowly escaping tooth extraction tendencies as they go! Makes for a rather congested ailse!

there were of course times when Christina had decided to go off in search of or to return a sepcific item leaving me with two wheelchairs and two girls and one trolley and an ailse full of customers who were either staring...which means not looking where they are going...oohing and ahhing at the girls...usually inclined to make Rosie sillier than ever and Eve beaming big smiles that get other customers attention so several adults coohing over Eve whilst others are falling over the spinning grinning monster on the floor!

One set of siblings managed to mar my really happy mood...about 6-10 years old they came along one aisle staring opened mouthed at the girls....we met them again in the next aisle where the younger, a boy, still staring opened mouthed manged to yell out to his mother...what are they? I responded less than kindly...they are children but a little more polite than you!

Why are they in there? because they can't walk! Of course by the time they met us two aisle later Rosie was stropping of to look at something Iwas yelking at her not to throw the bottle of wine and the little boy yelled...I thought she couldn't walk....I dashed in the opposite direction and left Mum to deal with that one!

At last we had had enough and decided the party would cope without whatever we had forgotten so headed to the cashiers....Rosie was keen to help put the items on the conveyor belt for a moment or two, then went to look at what those nearby had i their baskets, came through another channel to help put in the boxes then pushed the cashier off her swirly chair and sit on it herself!

We felt we had a great day, we had real fun in the shop and kept some other customers amused too. I am sure we upset a few and I am sure there will be others reporting a very different tale....but we were so impresed with the staff that we asked to speak with the managers..we got two! Do you think they were expecting complaints?

Anyway...this one cashier who was so chaty kind and totally not patronising deserves her moment of fame!

Thanks!

Tina