a picnic lunch at Greenhouse Park

Before I went back to work from maternity leave, my best friend Katie and her daughter (Greyson's best friend!) Sophia came out to our place to visit Greenhouse park for a picnic lunch with us.  It was one of those days that we really just needed to get out of the house, and the sun was shining, and our friends were on their way anyway.  That's really the perfect storm for a child photo shoot isn't it?

We lucked out on having our kids be such good friends.  We don't even have to force them to like each other.  They already do weird little things the same like hold their cups with one hand while holding their foot with the other.

We spent the sunny and unusually warm March day having our picnic lunch and chasing bubbles.

Then I paparazzi'ed the kids for their future wedding mem slideshow.  Hey, a mum can dream, right?

We let them wander around and dig in sand (until the throwing sand in each others' faces started).  I snapped this shot of Grey throwing sand over the volleyball net which made me feel like doing a foghorn (shout out to Susquehanna Vballers!)

Gemmi was with us too and besides waking up for 20 minutes to nurse, she slept the whole time.  She still thinks her older brother and best friend are so boring.

And because they played nicely, we let them throw rocks in the river which is what they really wanted to do the whole time anyway.

After that was when our little trip started to slip into the forced fun category.  We gave the kids 'nature walk' bags (ie. plastic baggies) to collect things while we took a little walk around the park.  And it was a total bust.  Kate and I were picking up flowers, rocks, and sticks and saying things like, "oooh, this stick looks cool.  let's put it in our nature collection!"  All the while, the kids were whining and asking to be picked up because they didn't want to walk anymore.  We dragged the two big ones and pushed the little one in the stroller over to a smaller stream and had them throw pieces of grilled cheese into the water for the fish that we were told were in there (but we couldn't find them).  Then we took our whining, sweaty, dirty kids and strapped them in the carseats before hugging each other goodbye.

I love having a best friend that can read my mind and say things like, "welp, I'm sufficiently tired from creating fun memories for the kids, lets go home and nap."

You've been there too, right?  When a fun trip takes a turn for the trying-to-do-stuff-you-saw-on-pinterest-but-the-kids-are-so-over-it-right-now?  Forced fun is hilarious...after a nap and a glass of wine of course.  At the moment, its not funny- only exhausting.