"Hey..Nice Red Boat...Can I Ride In It?..."

Yep...those are the words that came out of my sons mouth this morning.
All week the girls have been a camp (MeiMei at Kindergarten camp and Noley at Sculpture art camp) and Tobbers has been hanging with Mom. I had these grandiose ideas of what we we do this week just the two of us but as reality set in and work projects piled up...our activities got scaled way back. We started the week off with learning about pest inspections and according to the state of California what constitutes a "pest" We learned about termites versus wood boaring beatles...okay so that was how I packed the fact that I had to meet a cleint for a pest inspection and take Tobbers alone. It is all in the positioning---an art my children are learning well.

We visited the train museum and talked with tall attractive Swedish teenagers. Tobbers using his best Swedish accent managed to give the nice girls his own personal tour of the train museum with me in tow. Now I am not sure if they just found him charming or whether they really did not understand English well and thought he was a short docent?
We traveled over to West Sac and toured and played in the the water works play area where the crazy high maintenance moms take their whiny kids who cry and complain because they get wet---hello it is a WATER PARK! Tobber was a trooper and smiled nicely at the complaining moms and explained to them that when one is at a water play park it is very hard not to get wet and that maybe they should bring rain coats for their kids.
Today topped it off. We dropped Noley off and I decided to take Tobber to the boat ramp at the River to see if we could catch any boats launching. I knew he had never watched this and thought he might find it interesting. So we watch this one red speed boat getting launched by and older couple. Toby yells at them at the top of his lungs... " hey nice red boat.... can I ride in it with you?" So whadda you think happens next? Yep you guessed it. Hotrodding grandpa and his sexy date are hauling me and my son up and down the Sacramento River. I wish I could have had my camera on me to take a photo of one of the happiest boys in Sacramento. Tobbers never stopped smiling and ole grandpa was getting a kick out of Toby's interest in the motor, speed, pistons and other engine kinda stuff. We spun circles, we jumped (I almost barfed) and crashed over wakes and all the while Tobbers just smiled.
It is not the first time Tobbers has talked his way in to doing something. He has such an honest and inquisitive approach that it makes is hard for people to say no. He did a similar thing when we were at the ocean. He wanted to try a boogy board and he went up and down the beach asking people to try theirs and he finally found an older gentleman to lend him his board for 30 minutes. Yep...if all else fails he will make a good career in sales.