Making Milkshakes

Last night, Eric (the almost 14 year old) and I set off on a walk to our local grocery store for ingredients to make milkshakes. I love taking walks with Eric, as I find it to be a time when he really opens up about what's going on his world. He'll reply to at least 63% of my incessant mom questions, when we're walking. This is as opposed to 17.9% response rate when I ask him a question while we're both standing inside the house.

Eric will only go for a walk if he has a destination and a specific goal. None of this ambling around the neighborhood looking at the sunset with a non-specific route...he needs to know where we're going and why. So I usually come up with some excuse to head to the market and savor the fact that I can still get him to spend time with me!

Last night's excuse was milkshakes...we needed the fixings, so off we went. The topic of conversation was related to his takes on a certain book he spent the last two days reading, which I haven't read yet. I love how excited he gets about the things he reads - it doesn't matter what the book is, if he liked it he wants to spend time discussing it with me. He usually wants me to immediately drop everything else and read the book too, so that I can discuss it from a more informed perspective.

So we bought all of the stuff we needed and raced home so that the ice cream wouldn't be soup by the time we got there. The boys decided they were going to make the shakes themselves. Half an hour later, there were glasses littering the counter and a massive argument raging about why the consistency of the shakes was so thin. Somehow I was blamed for telling them to put in too much milk...Isn't it usually mom's fault?!

An expert was called in to help with emergency milkshake management (EMM). Dad, ER doc and former college bartender, has mean blender skills! He sent the three of us packing and emerged five minutes later with three shakes of the perfect thickness. Although I took a pass, I did sneak a sip so I can attest to their tastiness! Lucky thing we have a professional living in the house!