Adventure Day #2

Today was supposed to be a "feeding clinic day".  So my day was pretty much all planned out.  Then at 8:00am this morning I get a phone call from the feeding clinic telling me the person we needed to meet with today is very sick and will not be in.

I had a little girl who thought she was going to be babysat by one of her favorite babysitters and was going to go visiting at her house to play with her little sisters.  I needed to cancel the babysitter and there goes all the fun my little girl was thinking she was going to have today.  I feel bad because next week is her last week of summer vacation.  She will start school on August 17th and her orientation is August 16th.  Which leaves next Monday as her last "official" summer vacation day!  I wanted to make these last couple of weeks fun but her little brother caught a nasty virus and rendered us housebound last week and the first half of this week, and having us canceling various play-dates with friends she'll probably won't be able to connect with until school breaks.

So now I have an afternoon free of any activities.  I suppose cleaning my house would be a wise choice, but my daughter has only one more week of summer break - why would I want to waste it cleaning my house?  That would just be pretty darn silly now wouldn't it!

I said to the kids, lets go on an adventure after lunch.  That got an arousing "yes, cool, are we going rock hunting again?"  To which I said, if that's what you want to do, then sure!  Again, an arousing "yes" from both kids!

It was very frustrating that my son's feeding clinic meeting was cancelled today as he's been struggling with eating for well over a week.  He's also resorted to vomiting when he just doesn't want to eat.  For some reason, he was encouraged and motivated by our adventure after lunch that he ate his food without too much of a struggle.  So maybe this cancellation wasn't such a bad thing after all.

We unloaded our bucket with our rock treasures of last week so they would be empty and light enough to carry for our new adventure.  The kids climbed into the car and buckled up and we set off on our journey.  I remembered a spot that I saw a couple of months ago when my son and I were running through the park along the river, so I parked the car and got the stroller out and the kids and the buckets and we headed on our adventure.

The kids walking on the all purpose path.

We are so lucky to have a gem of a metropark system where we live.  There are at least 50 miles of all purpose trails throughout and we can actually walk to the park if we wanted to.  I was being a little lazy today by driving, I didn't want to have to walk 2 miles to the park and then 3 miles in the park and 2 miles back with one in a stroller and one complaining about how long the walk was!  She did that anyway!

The kids posing for the picture, too bad its blurry!

I always forget to grab the camera when I decide to do these little spontaneous adventures.  Fortunately my smart phone has a camera built into it, so I can capture these events.  Unfortunately the quality of the photos aren't always the best.  This picture would have been a great picture had I stood still when I pressed the button!  There was a truck driving on the path behind me and I didn't realize it so I got spooked as I heard it!  Hence the blurred picture.

Anyway, we found a nice spot to collect rocks, the same spot the truck pulled off at.  The truck contained two metropark employees given the dubious honor of painting over the graffiti on the bridge's support columns.  Sad to see what teenagers/young adults find amusing to write and draw on these columns.  Having to explain why the nice gentlemen had to paint the columns to my Norah was an experience in and of itself.  She's just learning how to read and my favorite curse word happened to be on the wall of the column.  Norah began to sound out the word and I cringed.  Fortunately she didn't get to finish it because the nice gentleman had quickly covered up the letters.  She later asked me what the word was and I told her I didn't want to share the word.  It wasn't nice and I don't want her using that word.  She asked if I say the word.  I said yes and I shouldn't.  It's not a nice word, but sometimes when Mommy is so frustrated it comes out.  I told her Mommy is ashamed that she says the word and that I didn't want her to use it because she is a nice girl with good manners.

We found some decent rocks but the spot wasn't a really good one because it was muddy and I was getting bitten by mosquitos.  So we packed things up and moved on down to find a more open, less muddy area to search for rock treasures!

We walked about a half a mile and we saw a man feeding the ducks and geese bread.  The kids thought it was really cool.  So they asked if we could stay a little while and watch.

The geese and ducks feasting on bread!

I've walked by this area many times but never knew there was this really neat water-fall.  The picture doesn't do it justice, it's really actually a rather cool area.  I was amazed at how the ducks and geese managed to not fall over the edge of the falls.

The kids wanted to see better so they climbed up the railing.  Not something I was really happy about them doing, but I understand what it is like to be short so I made sure I held on to them as they were standing up to peek over the railing.  The gentleman let the kids throw some bread to the ducks and geese.  Of course, after he lets them he tells me that we can be arrested for feeding the ducks and geese.  Great, I could see my mug shot and the caption under it "MOM CAUGHT AND ARRESTED FOR LETTING HER KIDS FEED THE DUCKS".  Sounds silly, but this man tells me he was cuffed and put in the police car once for feeding squirrels and they did a background check on him, making sure there wasn't any warrant outstanding for his arrest.  It didn't dawn on me at the time that maybe he looked suspicious to the police and maybe given he drove away in a windowless van that he could have been pegged as a pedophile or rapist.  Of course, none of this registered with me until I got home, I'm hoping it's because he didn't give me that spidey senses tingle of worry and not because I was just plain stupid today.  Of course, Norah and I had a long talk about this when we got home, how it was only okay to talk with this gentleman because I was with her.

While we were watching the man feeding the ducks and geese, a squirrel came up looking for some food too.  The guy said I've never seen such a strange looking squirrel.  He said it looked like half rat half squirrel.  So I glance down and sure as you know it, half the squirrel's tail was missing fur.  It looked as though it was a half rat, half squirrel.  The squirrel must have gotten into a fight with a predator because its tail looked quite disgusting without the fur.

I finally managed to pry my kids away from the ducks and geese.  They politely thanked the gentleman for letting them feed the ducks and geese and we went on our way.  He left at the same time.  I noticed he hopped into a windowless navy blue van, one that if I was a police officer, I would keep my eyes on too.  Then I thought it was weird that he said instead of going to Giant Eagle for groceries, he decided to go to the park and feed the ducks.  Hmmm, now I'm wondering if we were spared of being in a precarious situation.

As we were walking back, Norah says to me "this was the best adventure yet".  She said her favorite part was being able to feed the geese and the ducks.  Next time, can we bring Daddy?  I'm going to bet, next time Daddy is going to require he be there for more than one reason!  Ughh!