Skip to main content

Out and About


Three years ago, I took my oldest on a combined birthday girls trip to Dallas. It required a lot of planning and coordinating, since she had some tricky allergies and my youngest was still nursing, but we brought Mimi along as adult backup and had fun staying in a hotel, riding the DART to downtown and going to the aquarium.

Now she's outgrown her allergies and I'm no longer a food source, so this year she and I went to St Louis while the boys went to visit grandparents (so no one felt left out).


We had originally planned on going to the zoo, but ended up arriving in the depths of a heat wave, so we opted for air conditioned activities and went to the aquarium instead. I have been to a lot of aquariums and this was not my favorite, but it was the most interactive one I've been to and she had a delightful time letting doctor fish nibble her hands and feeding a sting ray. We finished out our time at Union Station by riding the Ferris wheel (a concession on her part, because they are more my thing than hers) and the carousel. We also spent a lot of time in the hotel pool (I haven't worn a swimsuit for five years and I don't remember the last time I was in the water in one) and ate a lot of Imo's pizza.


We were gone for two nights, and even though it wasn't quite what we'd planned, we did have a lovely time. Now everyone's home and the goal for the rest of the summer is to stay cool. Right now that looks like mornings spent splashing in a kiddie pool on the back deck, or going to the craft camp a nearby craft supply store puts on every summer. And lots of library books. The Bigs have enjoyed getting to choose their own books to read to themselves, and we have renewed The Crayons' Book of Feelings every week for the little one, who has finally memorized it and now reads it to me at bedtime. Spring felt too short, but we're getting by with air conditioning and ice pops.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading and Writing

  #attunedpracticetuesdays: where we share the rituals and routines that are aligned with our sense of peace and wellbeing A couple of months ago, while working on a commission project , I started a new practice. I was listening to audio books while working since the project required my eyes but not my full attention, and since it was fairly labor intensive, I took the weekends off (not something I would normally do). Lacking something to do with my hands, the first Saturday I decided to put my speedy reading to good use and read a novel in one sitting (my preferred method, anyway). Then I read another novel the next Saturday. And now it has becomes a weekly thing. The only rule is that it has to be fiction - I read enough non fiction that a novel a week isn't going to hurt anything (and it wouldn't anyway, reading is reading). Helping out with Paper Heart Books and attending a bring-your-own-book-club meeting last week helped restock my dwindling supply. I like to get hard cop
Post a Comment
Read more

Festivals and Fairs

October is the Month of Fun Outings. The weather is generally pleasant, many things are less crowded than they are in summer because school has started back, and there are also an array of local events. We try to make the most of it, since I got used to not getting sick while we stayed in for a couple years so now we ride out the germiest months at home. But before that, we frolic. We'll miss our favorite fall festival due to scheduling conflict, but there will be a small one at my eldest's dance studio, and we're all going to the state fair this year. There are street fairs and at some point soon we'll go and each choose a pumpkin to stack on the front step five deep, and my littlest will name each family member while pointing at their pumpkin every time we go in or out the door.  I've started leaving windows open at night, and sometimes it's been cool enough to have them open during the day, too. My desk candle has expanded to three candles on a cheese board b
Post a Comment
Read more

3.3 - Forage

I recently looked up the rest of the Mary Oliver poem that ends in "tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" because that was the only part I had ever heard, and it turns out the rest of The Summer Day  is about going for a walk and lying about in the grass. That's what she planned to do with her one wild and precious life. I feel like it gets misapplied a lot. As the weather grows cooler, I've been thinking about foraging, as a concept. I am a terrible gardener. Even as a child I loathed getting up early and tramping through the dewy grass to the dusty garden to water and pull weeds. As an adult, I stumbled onto the one plant that likes the climate of my front windows but claim no personal credit for their flourishing. If we ever move I may have to leave them here, to ensure their survival. There's also a pot of mint by my front step that survives on rain water or when one of the kids points out that it's a bit crunchy. Plants
1 comment
Read more