Picnic in the Park

My mom took the week of off work.  Minus regular days off for major holidays, its the only 5-7 days she takes off for the entire year.  And, of course, we swoop down on her house like hawks to mice because who doesn't want to spend all their free time messing up grandmas house....when she's there.

Our assignment for the week though was to help clean out the basement.  You see, my mother has been trying for, oh, at least a year to clean out all the paper and junk in the basement so that mine and my sisters old bedrooms are functional.  Both of us girls still have tons of junk in our old bedrooms and it needed a good clean sweep.

On Thursday, since it rained all day (yeah, blessed rain!) it was a perfect day to sit on the floor and look at old junk - certificates and awards, pictures, and goofy cards that I made for my sister and that she made for me.  My brother of course was our slave labor, carrying heavy boxes of recyclables upstairs...and complaining that we were throwing away all of his memories.

We didn't throw them all away.  We saved one small folder of stuff that truly qualified as "memories".  The dancing flower however, that my grandma gifted me for Christmas over 20 years ago headed for the trash.  It was not, in fact, my brother's memory but my own.

The project was no where near complete when we all headed for home on Thursday afternoon, but we had plans to resume the cleaning on Friday morning.  But, with a few quick phone calls yesterday morning it was determined that my mom was done with the basement project and we needed to do something fun.

And something fun we did.

Picnic in the park.

Feed the geese and ducks in the park.

Wyatt fall in the nasty dirty water in the park pond.

Molly screaming because she was happy or sad or excited or grumpy.

Elliott being the big kid and being in charge.

Jack being cute and sleepy.

Haley supervising the kiddos feeding ducks.

Mom and Annie being grossed out by floating bread in the stinky water and sitting far, far away.

Buy random dollar bin toys and candy from the toys store.

Molly eat the paper and the starburst on the way home because we weren't paying attention.

Overall, it was a great way to spend a Friday afternoon in the middle of the summer.