The Week in Review

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...Ok, so I really wanted to parody the opening paragraph of "Tale of Two Cities", but I just don't have the creative juices flowing this morning.  Therefore, I will just tell you about the highs and lows of the past week.

Our week started on a high note when we went to the water park we recently purchased season tickets for.  The first exciting thing was to discover the park was open an hour later than we originally thought.  This was especially exciting since we left our house an hour later than we had planned.  The second exciting thing we discovered is that Molly is able to go down all of the big slides that the boys are able to go down as long as she has a life vest on (which she always has on).  This means that Eric and I no longer have to take turns sitting and watching Molly in the kiddie areas while the other parent goes down slides with the boys.  We get to actually have family time.  It is fantastic.  I love Big Kahunas.  I'm not sure if it is the slides, the fact that all three kids are getting more and more comfortable in the water, the lack of sand, or the awesome mix of 80s and 90s music they have continuously playing.  But all of that adds up to us leaving completely confident in our decision to purchase season passes.  

An added bonus is that in our weekly journey to the park we have come up with a new car game.  At some point in the trip we all give estimates of how long it will take to get to the park (or home).  You might think that sounds lame, but, trust me, it really isn't.  Plus, based on the kids estimates, I think they might be getting a better sense of the passage of time.  #summerschool

Our peaks of Sunday fell to the valleys of Monday.  Granted it was our anniversary and we had a nice evening...until Will came in from picking up toys to say he had lost his tricycle.  We all went out and confirmed that it was, indeed, not in our yard.  It was a really nice Trek Trikester I had bought off Craigslist 4 years ago for Dom and would have easily been ridden by Molly and any other kids who happen to show up.  We looked around the neighborhood and our neighbors commiserated with us, but it was nowhere to be found.  

Tuesday, Will's life didn't improve too much due to the discovery of all of the kids' equipment at the Y (that I just blogged about) being moved to a different facility.  Poor Will.

Will's week continued to go downhill the next day as he fell and got a bump on his forehead within 10 minutes of playing at a splash park.  He spent the remainder of his time on my lap.  And got to sport a bandaged forehead for a few days.

This marked the lowest point of the week.  From here, everything started to look up.  At this point, I don't remember what we did on Thursday (though I did complete my 5K in under  31 minutes for the first time since starting to run again).  On Friday, summer vacation started for the district, so the boys spent most of the day playing with the next door neighbor.  We introduced him to 'Sorry' last Sunday and he has come over to play every day since.  We also received Dom's assessment scores and he did really well so I won't be put on probation this year for my poor teaching skills. 

On our walk up to the grocery store, I gave the kids magnifying glasses and binoculars and we investigated every anthill and flower on our journey.  Only do this if you have absolutely no time frame to accomplish anything.  The kids loved it.  My favorite part was when we got to a part where there is quite a bit of sand and I could point out the different tracks.  The kids weren't quite as impressed, but those anthills...Wow!

We ended Friday with a quick trip to Big Kahunas where we went to a new kiddie area that we would love if they didn't close the bigger slides by the end of the day.  As it is, there is very little for adults to do except sit in chairs while the kids wear themselves out on a few kid slides and swim in the shallow water...wait, what am I talking about, that place is an oasis!

And now we have come to Saturday where we ended the week on many high notes.  The first was at Dom's soccer game where he scored a hat trick.  One score, in particular, was impressive as he scored off a corner kick...like a pro. I was very proud of the head coach for that set piece, too.

 And Will and Molly did a nice job of letting me watch the game as they played with each other for a time until discovering kids with technological toys to watch.

The good times continued that afternoon as Eric put training wheels on Dom's old bike so that Will could ride it...which he did for an hour.  Dom overcame his fear of a bigger bike and discovered he could ride it no problem.  We celebrated with another trip to Big Kahunas.

Today as it is raining, we will take it easy.  Maybe I'll go take a nap.  It might just be a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.