It feels as if I’ve been more than a little busy this summer. For example, just since Ellie went on summer vacation, we’ve been to Worlds of Fun three times, Oceans of Fun twice, the Zoo twice, countless park trips, a few library trips, a trip to Savannah to see my mom and dad, a trip to Nebraska, and we’ve even gotten lost in the woods. All of these have been super fun but sometimes it’s good to just slow down and take a breather. Over the past couple of days, that’s been the plan.
Wednesday was one of the first days of the summer where it
felt like we actually took a break and decided to not run ourselves ragged. Instead,
we just peacefully chilled out at home and watched the movie, “Leo”. For the
record, Ellie and Ethan were initially cautious at the idea of watching a new
movie. They generally prefer to watch something that they have seen before but
I was eventually able to convince them to give something new a try. Lo and
behold, they ended up loving it and already want to watch it again!
Of course, no day can pass without work to be done. On
Wednesday, that looked like doing three loads of laundry and heading to Aldi to
do some long-delayed grocery shopping. I will say this about grocery shopping
with both kids. It didn’t take me long to miss those times during the school
year where I was shopping by myself. That was especially true when both kids
decided to hang on the side of the cart as I made my way through the store.
After all, a heavily loaded cart is hard enough to push without an extra
hundred pounds weighing it down.
Today was a little bit fuller than yesterday but it was
still fairly relaxing. We started our morning off with an impromptu trip to Hodge
Park for some morning park time. The beautiful thing about hitting up a park
around 8:00 am is that it’s a near guarantee that you will have the place to
yourself. That was exactly the case in this instance. While I generally enjoy
being around people, it is a special experience to just be able to soak up
playing at the park without the stimulus of other kids running around. It also
provided me with a nice little workout as Ellie and Ethan took turns being
slung down the zipline by me.
After our park trip, we headed to the Liberty branch of the
Mid-Continent Public Library where the kids picked out some new library books
to check out as well as picking out their reward for the first 20 days of the
Summer Reading Program. As Ellie gets older, it’s always fun to watch her painstakingly
deciding what book to choose for her reward. She always takes time to read the
backs as well as looking for awarded medals on the front.
This afternoon, we decided to take advantage of the nice
weather and our friend, Cochran, by heading to his neighborhood pool for a couple
of hours of swimming. As Ellie’s gotten older, it’s become really fun to work
with her on her swimming technique. On this occasion, I took her down to the
5-foot-deep part of the pool and let her practice with. Of course, I was
alongside her, taking care to do two things: Number 1: ensure that she did not drown
and Number 2: provide instruction as needed.
Soon enough though, our fun ended, and it was time to head
home and grill some tasty brats for dinner followed bed soon thereafter. I
guess the moral of the story is that even though we had a couple of days
without a big adventure planned, we still had plenty of things to do to provide
entertainment and keep us busy.
#DaddyWrite
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