a trip to the park

See that pond?  It's really just a big, thawing puddle next to the hockey rink.

There once was a warming house too long ago, but it burned down.

Which brings us to this precious story.

John would go up there and ice skate, and Dan would too. But one day John asked to go up there, and I said sure.

Except where are your skates?

'Skates?  Ummm, yeah, my skates."

What it came down to was he was up at the warming house, not skating at all, but rolling dice.  I don't think much money was involved, but still.  How wholesome an activity is THAT for a kid?

Oh yeah, let's homeschool. Then he can learn to gamble in a stinky-socks warming house.

Oh, oh, and about this same time of year, many years ago, he had frozen his hands playing basketball in the driveway.

His fingers were swollen, the palms too. His hands looked terrible, puffed like sausage, but he wanted to go up the rink and play hockey. 

I still remember this argument.  Jay and I were in the dining room working on our taxes and it ended up with me yelling something like, "Look at your damned hands!  Absolutely NOT!"

Whee. Fun times. 

John survived nicely, and so did we. His hands are still attached to his body and doing well.

This little girl did a bit of watching at first.

 She kind of loved the freedom.

This kid was there with his cute mother, who spoke to him in Spanish about the nina.

I take it that p.j. =  nina.

I told her we'd been to Mexico a couple months ago and how beautiful it was, and she told me where she was from, and when I told her we'd been in Puerto Vallarta, she rolled that off her tongue like music.

It even sounded even way gorgeous when she said it.

This is home from the park side, an angle rarely visible before the trees have leaves.  I didn't even recognize it for a second.

There goes Tim.

Back in 1997  when James was a tiny baby, we received a notice from the city, ordering us to paint the back of the garage.

The back of the garage?  Where is it?

Who can see it, and who cares?  Certainly not me.

Apparently the city had and did.

John and Dan were teenagers and we bought paint and in between dealing with infant James, and a very small Jay and Maria, we hurried up and scraped and painted that stupid wall.  We used Fleet Farm 15 year paint.

(They had 5, 10, and 15 year paint.  I went for the 15, not doing this again soon.)  James is 15 now.

So far, so good:

Awww, here Julia tipped over and Lydia was helping her, so she was fine.   We found band-aids.

And that's the end of a gorgeous Tuesday afternoon in March. 

love always, Val