Fun at the Park

Good grief, today's outing was rather dismal. The kids had the day off and so while Sid and Calvin went on their merry way to play with friends, Josie, Jon and Tommy were left home to shift for themselves with me. Josie has been begging for the past week to go to the new park that finally opened near our house. (Josie is one of those rare people with the talent to punish you in the most exsquisite way if you do not give in to her demands. As unpleasant as this trip turned out to be, staying home would have been much more painful.) We have been watching the park come together for the past several months and you would think from the wait that it must be something special. It is not. Not to alienate my male readership (all 3), but this park was obviously designed by a man, if you catch my meaning. The "park" area where the slides and swings are located is small and awkward, to make lots of room for a completely superfluous and I predict, seldom used softball field. Oh, and two putting greens.

In addition to the park's smallness and awkwardness is its closeness to a busy street--yet at the same time its long distance from the parking lot. A mother would never allow for such poor planning and design. Because as mothers, we all know that when it is time to go home, each child between the ages of 18 months and 3 1/2 years will have to be physically carried off like a combative fugitive of the law. Dragged kicking and screaming from the slides and swings up the long hill to the parking lot. (Unless they are running straight into traffic, in which case their nimble little legs will carry them off at an enviable pace.) No, I'm quite confident that a woman's opinion was not sought in the planning stages of this park.

The park is .4 miles from our house, at the end of our long and winding street. Today we drove the car to the park, then passed the park on our way to McDonald's. Approximate distance from our house: 4.5 miles. We then arrived back at the park with our sack full of rapidly cooling fast food and began stuffing our wind-lashed faces with cheeseburgers and fries, in a futile attempt to warm ourselves. You have never seen 4 people so pathetic and huddled as we were, shoveling lunch into our mouths. Because guess what? Today was dang cold. We spent more time in the car acquiring lunch than we did at the park. As you can see from these gorgeous photos, we sure picked a beautiful day for an outing at our new park!

Beyond the kids, a peek at that softball field we will all enjoy and appreciate so much.

This is the entire kid portion of the park. See those houses at the top of the pic? And the barely visible cars? That is the parking lot. This must have been how the pioneers felt.