Saturday, April 24, 2010

Only in Cambridge


Last night the girl from our ward who Maya did the commercial for (I'll post the link as soon as it's finished) babysat AND gave us movie gift certificates so we could have a DATE NIGHT!!! Yippee! So we were running a little late (whats new) and debating if it would be quicker to walk or drive (seeing as parking is tricky), when Casey suggested we take his bike-double dutch. We decided the bike would be the quickest and made complete fools out of ourselves riding over to Harvard Square for our movie. I was laughing like an idiot the whole way (I'm sure we looked like two circus bears riding on a clown bike), and it was kind of scary because the roads are so busy, and there are cars parked all along the side. I kept having to tuck my knees in to avoid injury, and poor Casey wasn't use to a wobbly passenger who couldn't get the knack of pushing off to start. Luckily it's not too far, and we did see another set of adults (both girls) riding the same way (minus the wobbly-ness), but I told Casey "Only in Cambridge. I would NEVER have done this in West Lafayette IN." I guess it's liberating to live somewhere where there is ALWAYS someone weirder that you.

Today there was a citywide effort to clean up the Charles River, and the ward was participating. I signed up the other day when Casey told me he thought he could take the morning off and come with us, but then last night he said he wouldn't be able to make it. Bummer...

I loaded the kids into the van while feeling sorry for myself, and headed to the designated rendezvous point, on the way to which I got lost, struggle to find parking, shove quarters into the parking meter, woke Miles up, loaded the kids into the stroller, huffed it across the bridge to the point where I though we were supposed to meet only to discover NO ONE WAS THERE!

I must have been in the wrong spot. I walked back and forth looking for a familiar face to no avail. Finally I decided to call it quits and take a break at a little park where the kids could play and I could feed a now screaming Miles.

They played for about 5 minutes when Maya came running up to me crossing her legs and doing the "pee pee dance". I rounded up the boys only to discover Bennett had already wet his pants, and we all ventured off to find a bathroom. There were no bathrooms to be found. Maya desperately asked to pee behind a tree but the area was so crowded I couldn't bring myself to let her water the plants .

I still had 1 1/2 hours on my meter and I didn't want to waste it, so I asked Maya if she though she could hold it a while. She said she'd try so we stayed at the park and hoped everyone would think Bennett had just sat in the river.

Even though nothing worked out as expected we had a lot of fun.

Bennett looks like he's about to fall asleep in the swing, but that tired little guy didn't stay tired for long.

They enjoyed the park, but I think they were a little disappointed that they didn't get to clean up the river. Porter kept asking me if they "do this every year". I told him they did and he said "Good, cause I didn't really get to clean anything up" I would beg to differ. He came home with his pockets full of bottle caps, metal tabs, chapstick tubes, and other random treasures.

Porter is getting to be such a good little helper. When it was time to go I asked him to go get Bennett. Next thing I know I look over and there is Porter pretending to be a train engine. He's chugging away and Bennett is following behind him holding onto the other end of a stick Porter was pulling along. I wish I was as creative a parent as Porter.

Benny had the best time with his stick collection. He kept making shooting noises while jabbing them in the direction of things. We did have one close call when he jabbed a little too close to a runner.

2 comments:

Kathy said...

Cute pictures. The one of Bennett
'resting' on the swing reminds me of a picture I took of James doing the same thing, at about the same age. I miss you guys.

Searls Stuff said...

What a shame the clean up didn't pan out! Good work turning a potentially disappointing event into a fun filled outing. Your kids get cuter all the time. (Why on earth wasn't there a bathroom around?)