The kids and my big weekend of fun began on Friday morning with the (most excitement Norman Crescent is going to see) replacement of a water main just next door to our house. It was a bit of an over-cast drizzly day so our window seats served us well to the activity that lasted all morning and partway into the afternoon.
The swim caps just to make it extra fun.
They had to dig a hole in the neighbor's front lawn, had a big digger sitting up on her lawn, and made access to her place out of the question for the day. I was really glad it was directly in front of our house.
We went with (my) Mom, Auntie Cheryl, and (my) Grandma to the River Landing Saturday morning. I hadn't expected it to be so nice out, but what a nice surprise to actually be basking in the hot sun as opposed to longing for it. The idea was to be walking along the river so we didn't stop for long at the spray park, and besides, the kids didn't have a change of clothes.
I sent the boys with Mom to church Saturday evening and spent some quality time with my first 'child'. It's a rare day that Silas gets to go on a walk of any real length so I decided to really make up for it and go for as long as his legs would take him (actually, I thought he'd go forever, but I was wrong). It took us 20 minutes to walk from our house to Broadway and 8th, and then we headed down Broadway and across the bridge to walk along the river.
We stopped at the River Landing (for a drink from the doggy fountain) and ran into a really nice couple that are German Shepherd people. They had all sorts of information and advice and knowledge about German bred shepherds (Silas) and American bred Shepherds (very angular, more pointed features, hind end drops off in a shocking slope). I'd really like to take Silas in schutzhund training at some point and they had great things to say about it and recommendations on where to go to train. It was actually really nice to just pull up a chair with 2 strangers and chat like we'd known each other for years. And that they fawned over Silas was rather nice as well (although he didn't seem to notice).
Silas, being a big fan of swimming (proof here), was likely thinking that he was going to be rewarded for his pack-carrying by going for a dip. I think he steps a little lighter and holds his head a little higher when he's near the water, but his wish was not to be this time.
Sorry, old boy. Maybe one of these days we'll go down to the river (across from the power station, near the radio station, I'm told) and let you paddle around.
All in all we were walking for 3 hours. At the beginning of the walk he was eager and willing, but as the walk progressed he started to lag a bit.
Walking up the broadway bridge you'd have thought it was a 9% grade by the way he dragged behind.
And about 2 1/2 hours into it I had to coax him along and keep him upbeat (at this point his pack only has a bit of water in it, so it wasn't heavy).
Made it home. I imagine if he got out on a few more walks like this a little more regularly we'd see a much better behaved Silas at home. On a nice day with no mosquitos and the children having fun doing something else I could go for 3 hour walks every weekend.
But that's not it, folks. Sunday morning I packed up the boys and hauled all 90lbs of boys, gear, and wagon to Buena Vista Park to play in the paddling pool.
Thornton Park. I knew there was a spray park there and the kids would at least be able to play in some form of water (it was hot and they'd been begging to go). Thornton Park is maybe 15 minutes from our house so there was some back-tracking to be done to get there (next time we'll skip Buena Vista Park, also, I think there is a paddling pool at John Lake School which is just around the corner from us - just hoping there's water in it).
Alisha, Logan, and Keaton showed up. We haven't seen 'baby Keaton' since he was still considered a baby, and I don't think the boys really believed that it was indeed 'baby Keaton'.
He was really apprehensive with the (really!) cold water at first, but once he accidentally got wet he was as happy as can be.
to be continued...
