One Last Day at the Park

The weekend before last, Alyssa asked on Sunday afternoon at about 4:30 if we could go to the park. I glanced at the clock and told her it was a little late in the day to do something like that, that dinner was going to need to be started soon, baths/showers needed to happen, blah blah blah.

I told her that the next nice weekend that occurred during which we didn’t have a bunch of other stuff to do, we’d go to the park. (Our weekends are filling up as we get closer to the holidays.)

On Saturday, we had to go to Huntington to a baby shower for Tom’s youngest son and his wife (the son’s wife, not Tom’s wife. Duh.) We left home at 11:00 that morning and got home at about 8:30 that evening. Yeah, long day. No park for us even though the weather was absolutely wonderful.

Yesterday morning, the first thing Olivia asked when we got up for the day was if we could go to the park.

I looked outside, was a blustery wind blowing and told her that if it warmed up, we’d go.

She watched the wind all day, wishing it away and hoping the sun was doing its job of warming up the air outside.

At 2:00, Tom came in, watched his favorite tv show (the weather channel) and said that if we were going to go to the park, we should probably do it in the next hour or so.

Alyssa raced to get dressed, Olivia let me put some annoying socks on her poor little Rapunzel feet and off we went.

We ended up spending over an hour at the park, first dodging what Alyssa called annoying seventh graders and an even more annoying classmate of hers. We had the park to ourselves for most of the hour, running, swinging, falling off the teeter totter, sliding down slides, climbing back up slides and pretending we were a wolf pack and one of the climbing areas was our den.

After the park we went to the local dairy treat and were happy to see that we’d made it for their last day of business for the season. The girls enjoyed their ice cream even though Olivia had to eat it with a sore knee. She tripped right outside the Dairy Treat and had to be carried to a table where her ice cream was delivered to her by a concerned sister.

It felt good to be outside, enjoying what is left of the sun as it weakens with each passing day into winter. The girls needed the fresh air (so did I) and the exercise. I love having these moments in time when memories are being made, when moments are being taken to just be together, to enjoy each other, to remember that we actually like each other as much as we love each other.