Ladybug Farms: Lets Go Fly A Kite...A Year Late

Last summer I made up a bucket list of things I wanted to do with my kids. We managed to cross off most of the things on my list, but a few of the items just never worked out. This past weekend when we were at the Lake House, with the weather being too cool to swim, we had to come up with alternatives for entertainment.

We had an old kite in the closet; one of those cheapy things. I pulled it out and gave it to the kids to play with in the yard. They loved it! And fought over it. One kite + Three kids = A problem. The next day I asked Hubby if we could stop at our favorite dime store and pick up two more kites and head to the beach. Hubby, being a kite flying enthusiast, agreed.

I imagined we would buy two more cheapy kites but Hubby had different plans. He let the kids pick out whatever they wanted from the selection. Joy picked out a fish, Lizzy a dolphin, and David a trick kite. And then Hubby threw a kite on the pile for me.

I can't remember the last time I flew a kite. It's been years, decades. But I decided I really needed to fly a kite just so I could mark it off last year's bucket list. We took our new kites down to the beach and that's where the fun began--putting together four new kites, two of which were really complicated. And just to add to our fun, it was a really windy day. But we did prevail after much muttering and cross examining of the directions.

And here are two of our kites in all their glory:

Kite flying is...so so. It was a fun family activity, but after a while it gets kind of boring. All you do is stand there and watch a piece of cloth flap in the sky. So the girls and I wound up our string and went to dip our toes in the lake. It was cold. Beyond cold.

Today I met up with a friend at an indoor play place that has a HUGE play structure and bouncy houses and slides. My kids have been asking to go for months now and it never worked out. But I promised them we would go before summer. It worked out that my friend asked if we wanted to go there with them.

I spent most of the time watching the kids play and talking with my friend. But then my girls got it into their heads that Mom needed to go up there with them. "Please, Mom. There are other adults up there. We want you to go down the slide with us." Oh boy. I try really, really hard to hide my weird aversions from my kids so they don't get like me. So my girls aren't aware that I don't like play places. At all. I don't like the tight spaces. I don't like crawling through all those kid germs. And I really hate twisty tube slides. I know I'll never actually get stuck in there, but they're small. And closed in. And...blah.

I sat there for a few minutes making up excuses for why I couldn't go up there with the girls. And then I gave myself a pep talk and convinced myself I needed to do this for my kids. So I crawled through tiny spaces, walked hunched over, gave myself bruises on my knees from crawling on those hard plastic floors (ouch!) and came out of all that mess to the platform in front of the tallest twisty slide out of all of them. Puke.

The slide of death

I tried to slow myself down and that only resulted in a scraped up elbow. So after a few seconds of realizing that plan wasn't going to work, I went straight as a board and just let myself go down the slide fast. And it wasn't so bad but I wasn't willing to go back up there again. But, it made my girls happy and they told Hubby that the highlight of their outing was seeing Mommy go down the slide.

So, this week I did two new things and discovered I don't really like either of them very much. But I laughed and made memories so it's okay that they weren't my favorite. Because really, when it comes down to it, my most favorite things to do are things that make memories with my family. Even if they aren't at the top of my fun list.

(Only as I was getting ready to post this did I realize that it's been weeks since I posted an update on my 52 Weeks of New project. Oops. I am still trying new things all the time, even if I haven't been blogging about them. Like many people experience at this time of year, I have had the worst case of school slump ever. Complete burnout. It took every thing in me just to get school done and keep up with the house, let alone finding the mental energy to blog. With the end of the school year next week, hopefully I will get back on track with my blogging and my 52 Weeks project. So excuse the gap between weeks.)