Spontaneity

So my biggest struggle this summer has been to quit worrying about the house, work, etc… and just have fun with the kids. It would eat at me every time I went from the kitchen to the laundry room and would see the kids just watching T.V., on the computer or playing Wii. I guess I could kick them out of the house and make them play outside but you can only let the hose run for so long and then they are back in the house to escape the wretched heat!  Sometimes I feel like they just live in this virtual world and are losing their grip on reality. It sounds funny, but it is a serious concern for me.

So…….. yesterday I looked at my pile of paperwork, my heaps of growing laundry and said Okay, I can do this. Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy, as Dally likes to say. We’re going. I don’t know where, but we are going somewhere.

Then I told my kids (much to their protest because virtual worlds are EXTREMELY hard to leave) that we were going.

The hardest part was limiting who I could take. You see I only have an eight passenger vehicle. If I had a bigger car, I would take all of their friends, I really would. But I don’t so I had to limit it to  cousins  Tucker, Jake and Little Josh who happened to already be at the house anyway.

We got in the car and drove to Springdale. We got ice cream cones and found a great water hole with a rope swing! The kids had a ball! I was so bummed because my camera battery died, so I could only take pictures with my crappy phone. Then we went to the Apple Orchard and had freshly squeezed apple juice (so yummy) and organic suckers. It was beautiful there because they had huge trees and lots of grass to play on.

Was it worth it? Yes! Was it hard to get there? Yes! in fact, on the way I almost turned around twice because of 2 whiny kids. Am I paying for it today? Yes! I’ve been cleaning all morning. But I learned something. There is a way to create happy memories for your kids even when they are different ages and you are on a budget.

Now…. what will I do next?

  Pictures from my crappy phone. Must use magnifying glass.