Another day of Thanksgiving weekend. We’ve emphasized doing adventures with the kids this weekend. We’ll need to focus on the business of life again eventually, but not today. Today was definitely filled with mini-adventures.
It was Kids Marathon day. We joined 25,000 of our favorite kid friends. It was an early morning. There was uncertainty in this endeavor. I don’t like moving beyond my comfort zone. Early morning, rushed leaving, crowds, lost kids, weather, achy joints, no place to sit, staying together. These were all the stresses. The joy was the being there and the end.
The start definitely brought out some of these stressers. Where are we going? Where can we park? Logistics. Working together. These all take finesse. I’m not sure we did it with the best finesse. The Memorial Stadium was an interesting place to meet.
We walked into the very narrow exit bottle necked with families looking for their schools. The bleachers are very narrow. I looked and looked for our school. Our PE teacher had our numbers. I went down to the front with Wayne and the kids trailing behind. Finally, after lots of searching, we found our group. The waiting was boring for the kids. The bleachers were narrow and steep and it felt easy to tip over into a dangerous fall. We waited a long time. Sara felt kind of miserable.
We started thinking about bathrooms and where to take a pit stop. We pondered how not to lose our kids since we’d forgotten travel necklaces. We ended up writing Wayne’s cell on their race numbers pinned on their clothes.
Once movement began, things got better.
Not that it was that bad. The day was dry relatively. We were sheltered.
We took photos with the school. We then broke off for the pit stop. We hurried to catch up with our group. We made it up to them before the race started. Then we started walking and everyone swirled ahead of us.
The girls were impatient for us to run. We tried some trotting, but I really don’t do well. So we held the girls back and all walked together. Eventually, the crowds gave way. I didn’t have to hold hands every second. It was neat to walk on Denny. We started to laugh and loosen up as the crowds loosened. It became fun.
In a crowd of 25,000, we had friends. We crossed the finish line and were greeted by Christy and Bella, a Mom and daughter from our church. We crossed the line and turned around and hugged their family in greeting. It was neat to be together.
We looked in skepticism at the crowded, long, narrow, bottlenecked tunnel. We decided to skip more crowds and head to the Pacific Science Center. We had a membership and just slipped in. After our triumph, we just played. Laura and I played with hermit crabs and anemone. There was a huge rubics cube. We watched a show about air’s power. We watched liquid nitrogen dispersed on water.
As we were leaving, this Pacific Science Center employee was fishing out boots from the pond. A father had fake pretended to throw his boy into the pond. Unfortunately, the boots didn’t get the message it was fake. So the family enjoyed hot dogs like us while waiting for them to be fished out. That made me chuckle. Parenting is never simple. But it is delightful.
Lunch was a blessing. Dante’s Inferno had a hotdog cart. We all got a quick, comforting lunch.
We went home for a quick hour.
Then off to Sam’s 6th bday. It was such a collegial, comfortable time.
Here’s the guys geeking out about iphones oblivious to the screams of 6 yo girls.
The girls played as a quartet after all the guests trickled away. We slipped into a celebratory dinner at Red Robin. Saturday evening had been set aside for chores, but became a continuation of Sabbath and friendship.
Now we are playing Zelda. Sara can play. She does some reading practice and reads all the words for her sister. The most hilarious part is that the girls keep forcing Link to go to the toilet, sit, and giggle as the toilet flushes. This has been repeated multiple times.