Still having fun...

Thursday was proof that I'm in the runnning for mother-of-the-year. It was Coleman's day to choose our activity and I took everyone back to Calaway Park for the second time that week! That's right, you heard me right, twice in one week. If you don't know, Calaway Park is a small amusment park here - complete with annoying kids, spinning rides, longish lines, and an array of kid-tempting treats.

The weather on Friday wasn't so great, so Sam opted to stay home for his activity. I drew a map to a couple of playgrounds close by that the kids had never been to, stuck it on a clipboard, packed up some granola bars and sent the 4 older kids on a neighbourhood adventure. They loved it. In fact, they loved it so much that on Saturday I actually took the time to make a mini-walking version of a car rally. I sent the kids for about an hour walk around the neighbourhood - they had to follow my directions and find answers to questions all about things they were seeing on the route. I think they liked it. I may do one every week it was that much fun for them.

Which leads me to talking about car rallies. When we were little my parents were super involved in our community association (which makes me think of another blog for another day). Every year the association would host a car rally and my parents always went with some friends. Usually sometime during the next week they would load us kids up in the van and do the route with us again and let us see if we could find the answers. I remember it being a lot of fun. I also remember my parents making up the rally some years. And I may also remember helping to send cars on their way one year -- or I may be making that up: Colleen, do you know??

Finally, my parents weren't active members of the church at the time of these rallies, and I'm pretty sure there was some beer drinking involved at these rallies - oh, the 80s when a neighbourhood could get together and have a big drinking and driving fest and no one thought anything was wrong!