Roused myself this morning after a too-fun evening out with siblings last night, and organized the children for a bike adventure. The photos are taken by my ancient cellphone (I got it three years ago, which means in tech years it's one hundred and thirty-three); here we are toward the end of our journey, when the children were splashing themselves liberally with melting popsicles. It got ugly. Well, it got sticky, to be more precise. There was some semi-serious discussion of whether hands might get glued onto bike handles, that's how sticky it got. But prior to that, we biked all the way to Columbia Lake and picnicked in the shade on a hill overlooking the water, a field of black-eyed susans waving below us in the cool breeze. The only thing that could have made the event ever so slightly more charmed would have been the addition of Kevin; though I actually find the children are better behaved, and rise to the occasion more earnestly, when they are being supervised by only one parent (why is that?). After lunch, we followed the gravel trail along the stream and found a patch of red raspberries. I almost encouraged the kids to clamber down a steep hill into the swampy creek, but thought better of it. We biked amidst the lunch crowd on the trail going through campus, and the concession stand at the park was our final stop. With the exception of one small meltdown over having to share the much-coveted slushie (our newly four-year-old girlie is still learning to control her impulses for "now, now, now!"), by the time we were home the children were in a blissed-out state. CJ crawled out of the bike stroller and into the sandbox where he spent almost an hour, the big kids read on the couch, and I sipped a cup of cold coffee (let's pretend it was iced) on the back porch while browsing the paper.
And I'm ever so reminded of why I love summer.
