Playing Outside

Grace had a GREAT night of playing outside last night. She played on her playground, swung on her swing, wrestled the dog, stomped in mud puddles and did some stunt riding on her plastic, electric Dora four wheeler.

Bryon and Grandpa messed around in the barn trying to put a new side mirror on the truck. It was a turkey hunting casualty. The cows broke it off.

Like all home automotive fix-it projects, it was painful. They just got one of the screws undone and then half the other screws fell down into the door panel. Which of course meant that they had to take OFF the door panel. Which led to the breaking of fragile and now after a decade, rotten, plastic clips holding the door panel on. Which lead to buying more clips at O'Reilly's today. Which means more painful automotive fix-it time in the barn.

Ain't that a peach.

I did look out at one point while the auto repair and the playing was going on to see Grace leaning over on the edge of the pond looking intently at something. The Mommy instinct in me kicked in and I yelled out (with my VERY LOUD and ANGRY voice), "GET AWAY FROM THAT POND RIGHT NOW. IF YOU EEEEVVVEEERRR go down there again without ME, or DADDY or GRANDPA, you are DONE playing outside and will get a spanking!"

She was looking for frogs. I can't blame her. I spent many hours at our own pond which was WAY out of sight from the house, walking around it looking for frogs. OR just running around it before the dog got to it to scare them in. We shot them with our BB guns too, until Mike decided to fill the little hole in the end of the gun with dirt. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Turns out it isn't so great for BB guns. It never did work after that. At least the frogs were safer.

Remember those days? Playing outside ALL DAY? I think Grace is going to get sort of gypped because my Mom was home many summers with us and we played outside for HOURS. I remember the last day of school when the summer seemed like it would last FOREVER and we'd NEVER have to go back. We had three little girl neighbors right by our house and we played every day. Unless of course one of us was mad at the other which usually lasted a day and we were all back at it.

We have a neighbor girl close by too but we've only invited her over a couple of times because she comes with baggage (two little brothers). Maybe once school starts, Ashton is a year older than Grace, they'll buddy up and she can start making some of those same memories.

Frogs beware.