A little family time

It doesn't happen all that often, but on Saturday, we had the chance to spend some quality time together at the park. My big idea was that I'd pack a picnic lunch in the handy dandy picnic basket, grab the blanket and the water guns, and go early. However, things never turn out as I plan!

We really needed to make a run to the Shoe Dept. for some sandels, since Walmart is no longer carrying squat in the way of kids shoes. We also needed to go buy a few new water guns, since the cheapie ones I bought wouldn't work when we tested them (thank goodness Austin has the foresight to try them out before we left!). So we grabbed the (empty) picnic basket, some sodas and kool-aid waters, and the blanket, and made a mad dash for the shoe store before heading to the park. Austin and I split up; he went to Walmart while I took the kids into the shoe store (how did I wind up doing this alone?) and we went about buying shoes for everyone. Annah, of course, ever the dainty princess, was thrilled with the beautiful leather sandels with the butterflies on them that we picked out. Jonathan, on the other hand, didn't want a thing to do with the ones I found for him. His reason? They weren't green.

I tried my hardest to explain to him that leather sandels just don't come in green, but it was pointless, and turned into a "let me throw myself on the floor and scream" fit. Until he said that the bottom of one of pairs I'd pick out had green on it. After that, everything was fine! And then Matthew, of course, his too cool for sandels, so we wound up with a pair of Polo canvas sneakers. Ugly and very reminicint of the Converse high tops I wore in high school, he was thrilled with his stylish purchase!

When we were done, we met Austin at the van and decided to just grab some ever-faithful McDonalds burgers and head on to the park. Subway would have been much better, but sometimes sanity wins out over desire, as was the case here. Once at the park, the McD's was consumed in record time, although Jonathan refused to eat on the blanket with us, and chose instead to walk around the park while eating his burger. Oh well....he ate!

We broke out the water guns and let the kids get wet in their clothes; they dry, right? So I figured why deny them the fun. I made Matthew hang out on the blanket, since he'd been out of school for a couple of days with a bad earache and didn't need to be up running around. He decided to soak up the sun since I was being so unreasonable about him staying put, while the little kids went and got on the swings with Daddy pushing. (Note to self: remind Austin next time that we are NOT in an episode of Mythbusters, and we do NOT need to find out if a 5 year old on a swing will go all the way around!) Jonathan had a blast, screaming "Higher Daddy, higher!" until Austin went a bit too far and then Jonathan decided, "That's high enough!!!"

I have a tendency to panic a bit when it comes to my kids, so seeing Annah-bug and J climbing up and down some of those poles on the play equipment (which is called a 'Big Play' to my kids) kind of scared me, but I survived. After some fun feeding the leftover french fries to the ducks, plenty of swinging and sliding, and a few more water gun fights, Jonathan was worn out, and we decided to make the trip home. It really was a great couple of hours, and I'm thankful that it all turned out as good as it did. Because, as I said before, things usually don't work out the way I plan them!