A grocery store had 27 bottles of regular soda, 10 bottles of diet soda and 8 apples. How many bottles did they have total?
There are 27 bottles of regular soda. 
There are 10 bottles of diet soda. 
There are 8 apples. 

We want to know how many bottles they have in total. 

We can solve this problem in two ways. One way is to add 27 + 10 to find out how many bottles of soda they have, and then add 8 to find out the total number of items. 

27 + 10 = 37
37 + 8 = 45

The other way to solve this problem is to add all of the items together. 

27 + 10 + 8 = 45