"Fun mom" outing

Last week had its share of star-crossed gatherings. We made plans to meet up with two sets of moms-and-kids in our ward at the nearest splash pad (45 minutes away) so the moms could chat while our kids played. We arrived at the splash pad first, before our friends. The kids played at the splash pad (without our friends) for half an hour before I realized that we had gone to the wrong place. I spent a good amount of time corralling the reluctant children back into the van. It is hard to gather kids at a crowded splash pad, especially when you're not wearing a swimsuit! Right when I had one kid cornered, the other two ran off in opposite directions! I felt bad for pulling them away so soon after our arrival, but at that point I thought we'd be at the other splash pad in no time. Alas, it was not in the cards. One of the text messages from our friends said it was the "big wood castle park" so I tried Goethals Park, passing around our picnic PBJs while we drove. No splash pad. I felt so lame for not finding the right park because even though I'm new in our ward, I am not new to the tri cities! We decided to abandon our plans to do our own thing, and spent an hour at Goethals Park playing in the tunnels, creek, and zip line before heading out to our three "fun errands": two bookstores and the scout store.

I do not want to turn this into a cub scout rant, so suffice it to say that we spent $70 on the required cub scout paraphernalia for Jay to start up with the church troop. The checkout lady was all matronly and acted like she was presenting Jay with a rite of passage and he should be so grateful to her. But she wasn't the one paying for all that STUFF! I gave a wan smile, forked over the fortune, and got OUT of there. Sigh. Did I mention that I was called as the 8 year old cub scout leader? This should be interesting.

After that expensive trip, we went to my favorite used bookstore, The Bookworm, where they were having their annual teacher sale, with a section of books for 50 cents each. Guess what book I found? A pristine copy of the cub scout Wolf manual, which we had just spent $15 on at the scout store. It was 50 cents at the Bookworm. I bought it on principle, although there was no way I was about to drive back across that busy section of town and return the $15 book.

I browsed the Bookworm happily while the kids played in the fun corner full of toys (genius store furnishings). Amber's extra-saggy bathing suit bottom brought me back to reality with a jolt: I forgot to put her pull-up diaper back on after the watery parks, and she pooped in her suit. In the bookstore. With other people nearby. It was not our finest moment. I promptly purchased my small stack of 50 cent Black Stallion books with a few others, and herded the kids out to the van. We were parked right in front of the big windows of the store and I had no choice but to yank Amber's suit down right there and take care of the mess. The clump of poo fell out of the suit and landed on Amber's shoe, and the situation did not improve until I fished a discarded peanut buttery sandwich baggie from our picnic lunch off of the floor of the van and used it to scoop up the plop o poo off of the shoe. I wrapped it all in a grocery bag, scrubbed Amber's butt off, sanitized her shoe, and FINALLY got her back into the car seat. It was 93 degrees. Stinky smells and wiggly two year olds are always more difficult in the heat.

After that I was feeling hot, tired, and done with the outing, but it has been over a year since I took all three kids to walk around the temple together and I really wanted to go. It felt like a good idea, and I reminded myself that I have never regretted going to the temple. So I mentioned it to the kids. My suggestion of a temple walk garnered a 66% approval rate from the back seats, and I was able to get a unanimous vote when I threw ice cream into sweeten the deal. We walked around the beautiful temple and admired all of the bright blooming flowers. Every time the angel Moroni was out of view, Amber said "where's da temple?" Then when it came back into sight, she said "dere it is!" Although I was too hot to explain that not all temples have the angel Moroni statue, it was still a worthwhile walk. In spite of the heat, we felt that calming, steady peace that lingers even on the outside of the temple. I was glad that we went. Amber did run away a few times, but for the most part I think it was positive.

We drove away from the temple chanting ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM! and decided that we needed a drive thru since we were all hot and tired. McDonald's won the day, and I passed soft serve cones to the back seat thinking that our nice new van was about to get a sticky milky taste of real life. Miraculously, the damage was minimal, and we drove the 45 minutes home in good spirits. Visiting two parks and getting ice cream made me feel like quite the fun mom. We don't go out and get treats very often at all (we are more of a slow-paced home-body type of family), so it felt extra special to have an outing designed for PLAYING and then finish it with ice cream. A fine fun-mom summer's day!

Jay and Rose, shooting each other with pivoting water guns.

Rose climbed atop the basketball shaped tunnel slide. It seemed risky to me, but what is childhood without a few risky climbs?

Amber was in heaven, but this particular park had too many blind spots for me to sit comfortably and watch Amber roam. She kept disappearing alarmingly.

Goethals Park:

I thought it was a wood castle, but it turned out to be brown plastic.

(she peed through her swimsuit onto the grass, so I told her to sit in the creek to wash off...)

 Jay riding the fun zip line swing at Goethals Park.

Temple walk:

(selfies in the bright sunshine are not all fun and games)

Ice cream on a hot day: fun mom win!