Today, we went to two different parks. We played this morning at a neighbor's 4-year birthday celebration at Porter Park in Champaign (they really need to put some Port-a-Potties out there, so people don't have to throw their kids in the car and run them to the dog park on the other side of Windsor). X-man got picked as the big kid friend to the 4-year old's sister. That was very sweet of her. Plus, X-man was not about to complain about having donuts and cupcakes and playing ball and climbing things all morning.
Then we ran home and let Lily out and got back in the car to drive to Decatur. We were meeting up for a goodbye playdate between myself and one of my former students from Millikin. He has a son the same age as X-man, so we met at a park and let the boys go crazy. One was way into sensory and the other was way into pretend play, so there was a lot more adult/child interaction than child/child interaction. But hey, that's the way it goes. We ate lunch in Decatur while we were there and I ran X-man down to Millikin to see where I went to college. Of course, as we're driving through he exclaims that he needs to go to the bathroom, even though he'd just gone at the restaurant before we left. So I stopped at Shilling Hall and took him into the building. It's Saturday, in May, so it was pretty much abandoned. All the lights were dim and X-man was scared he wasn't supposed to be in there because he was "too big." (meaning too little)
But he got over it as soon as he realized I knew exactly where I was going. :-) We played at Forsyth Park north of Decatur with our friends for an hour and a half. There were cops and robbers, digging in pebbles, running on a log play equipment, climbing walls, etc. We even rolled down a big hill a few times.
Then we came home, and X-man was tired, so he sat down with an iPad. MacTroll went up to our bedroom, and Lily went outside with me. I'm pleased to say that the strawberries Rachel gave me two summers ago have really started to go nuts in the front garden. Here's hoping I get some berries this year! I only pulled two off last year. Of course, this might have been due to the sneakiness of my bunny population, too.
I also had to weed the Knockout Roses in the backyard. If you look beyond our fence in to the "back 40" you'll see NOTHING but thistle. It grows right up to the fence and is starting to come through the fence. We have a lawn service, so as soon as they come through, it usually prevents taking over the yard, but it blows into the south gardens and the sandbox, so I have to stay on it. I used to have peppers and tomatoes where the roses are now, so I didn't want to spray anything toxic around them. But now that they're gone... I'm seriously considering it. Because getting between pokey rose bushes to pull out pokey weeds is a terrible job.
Not that I'll have to worry about this particular garden in six weeks... MacTroll is flying out on Monday to go look at houses. Let's hope there's one out there that he gets!
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