Just the three of us, some hot dogs and a little giving back.

This past weekend was the first of quite a few weeks and weekends through the end of July that Chris will be out of town and I'll be home with the boys.  With a packed schedule of traveling and workshops for him that will leave me with LOTS of time to plan play dates, zoo visits and park visits for just the three of us.  And I'll tell you what, I'm ok with that.

This weekend (a three day-er) was beautiful.  I had planned some fun activities outside of the house for us.  They included a visit to Grandma and Papa's for dinner one night and the Better-Than-A-Picnic Picnic with Hebrew National the next day.  Saturday, despite the wet forecast, I packed up the kids and some snacks and headed to Highland Park where we met up with the Hebrew National Crew and a few of my local blogger friends from TheMotherhood.com for an afternoon of picnic food and a little community service too.

We got there is it was POURING.  I parked, pulled up the radar map on my phone and we waited it out a few minutes.  When the rain let up a little we went to our picnic.  I had told the kids we would have hot dogs and they were READY to eat!  We enjoyed our hot dogs and a few apples and multiple bananas!  Then it was time to get to work.  The service project was to remove some invasive plants from the park.  Much to my surprise, my kids WANTED to weed!  We found our plant and went to town! We filled two garbage bags with Garlic Mustard (invasive) and another with trash!  Upon our return to the picnic area our friend Amy and her family were arriving.  So we visited with them while they ate and then we headed to the playground on the other side of the park together!

The kids had fun, I had fun, we didn't let the weather hold us hostage at home and that felt great!  The kids seem to have turned a corner too.  More and more they are able to stick nearby and entertain themselves a bit while I have a conversation or two and that is quite liberating! They are also interested in more "big" kid activities like weeding!  They wanted to follow the trail and help with trash too and that was a lot of fun!  I'm looking forward to taking them to a few new parks solo this summer, a task that was quite daunting prior to this Spring because they weren't interested in sticking together at all. Consistently, one would always run one way and the other would run the opposite...and that is WAY to stressful for one parent to manage. 

I've got some fun and exciting things planned for the next few weeks of my solo parenting gig!  I'm sure I'll blog about some of them too!  We're headed to a Splash park within the next two weeks and I'm looking forward to it!