Summer Fun – On Memorial Day

On Memorial Day we took off and went to town. We didn’t really go to do any shopping, but we still ended up doing a little bit. Snagged some pretty good deals on some new clothes and we bought some “Word World” DVDs, Thomas just absolutely loves them. But other than shopping what we really went to town for was to have some family fun. Good old fashioned family fun, outside in the sunlight. There’s a really nice little park there geared towards children around Thomas’ size. Baby swings and shorter slides and play equipment that’s easier for him to crawl up and down on. One of the things that was on this specific jungle gym was a steering wheel. He absolutely loves “driving”. He is slightly obsessed with it actually. But he would crawl up there, pretend that he was driving around and then stop and crawl through the tunnel, to finish it off by sliding down an easily sloped toddler slide. The only slide we have come across as of now that I haven’t had to stand at the bottom and catch him so he doesn’t go shooting off. 

I know to our little playground in our yard I want to add a steering wheel…I’d love it if we could attach it to something that looked very car like, Not just a steering wheel on a post – although for him that would probably be enough. And I would like a tunnel. He loves crawling through the shorter and wider ones vs the long and smaller ones we have come across at other parks.

After playing at the park we went to the store and bought some food for a picnic (we had packed a blanket). After buying some food from WalMart, we headed back to the park, where – DaDaDaDA! – the river runs by. Not to close so it’s dangerous, its across the street and across more lawn and then across more sandy “beach”, but it’s pretty much right by it. We sat down there and ate chicken salad on crackers, a fruit mix, a veggie mix, some turkey roll ups, cheese sticks and chips. Thomas loved it. Usually I can’t get him to concentrate on eating while we are outside, but with the promise of wading in the water he sat there and ate a good meal.

We picked up a lot of rocks from the river that were fairly nice looking rocks…you know as far as rocks are concerned. Thomas played in the sand, which is one of his absolute favorite things to do. He threw LOTS of rocks into the river – another favorite. And waded around in the river. Next time we go I will be taking a camcorder so that I can record him running from the waves that come rushing up to the shore when boats speed by. It is super cute. – With the rocks that we gathered I plan on making a shadow box and putting some of them in there, maybe when we go back I will get some sand and put some sand under the rocks in the shadow box. Haha. But a lot of the rocks will be put into our fish tank. I hate having to clean all of those ity bity rocks that you buy in the store.

We spent the day at the river and the park. And finished it up with eating at McDonald’s for supper. He decided he wanted McNuggets. The McDonald’s that we went to was one of the few with the children’s play area inside. So after eating his meal, we let him get down and play in the little “park”. He loved it and of course I had to take pictures. Afterwards we went back to WalMart to buy a couple of supplies like wipers for the car and some rain-ex.

By this time the sky has started to darken – and not because the sun was gone. It was getting a dark gray blue-ish color that is a surefire sign that there's a storm coming. Since it is an hour and a half drive home from the river we deiced we better call home and see if we should infarct head home or wait it out in town, we were advised to come home. My gut told me to stay and wait it out, but heck they had the radar, the news, and the weather people telling them what was going on and what was going to happen…and what would be coming. They wouldn’t let us drive off into a storm, that my sisters rinky dink little car could handle – right?

So here we are, cleaning the windows and putting on the wiper and the rain-ex before we head down the road. As we drive towards home it looks like we would just simply drive out of the dark scary clouds and it would be an easy trip home. Thomas was fast asleep from his day of fun, so it would make it an even easier and more relaxing drive him.

After we get to the next town, which isn’t really a town but more like just a gas station / truck stop. We stopped used the bathroom, and checked with the ladies there because in the horizon it was lightening, a lot. And my brother had called us and told us that at home it was pitch black from the storm, and thundering and lightening like crazy. But with all of the advice we received about the storm, from the people at the truck stop (one worker had just come from the area we were heading towards 10 minutes earlier), and my family member at home who were (supposedly) watching the weather, we headed off towards the next town. It was only 20 minutes away. If we could make it to that town before the storm hit us we would just sit there and wait it out. BAD IDEA!

We should have stayed put. After we got 10 minutes down the road the wind was blowing the car around on the road (slightly it didn’t seem too bad)…but the truck and trailer in front of us was about blowing off of the wrong side of the road. The lightening was blinding. It was so bright at times when it flashed or struck, it would reflect off of all the rain water all over the road and off of everything else that you couldn’t see anything but a bright white. Then it would go back to being pitch black and being hammered with rain. It eventually got to the point where our wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain to help us even so much as see the white line along the side of the road. I could no longer see the trailer’s taillights in front of us. We were told that we were driving in the dark red spot of the storm. And eventually it got so bad that we and everyone around us had to pull off of the road (from what we could tell) and stop. No one tried passing and going on. Everyone just sat there, stranded along the side of the interstate, not moving. Just being pelted by rain and hail and having the wind rape you car. And yet somehow my innocent little boy slept through the whole thing. Which was loud enough we couldn’t drown it out with the music anymore. It lightened up just enough that we deiced we were going to try and drive the last mile to our exit. Turns out we were only about a quarter of a mile away from the exit, we pulled off, stopped at the Truck stop right off the interstate, parked and turned the car off. I was SOO relieved we didn’t just blow away, or a tornado didn’t come and suck us up and throw us into some twisted world. We waited there till the storm had stopped and then headed the rest of the way home.

By the time we got home, we laid Thomas down in bed (he didn’t wake up too much) and then we had to wait until our shakes were gone before my sister and I could manage to crawl into bed and relax enough to go to sleep.

Next time everyone is telling me to just brave the storm, and my gut is telling me to stay where I am and wait it out I will be listening to my gut. I almost had to sell my soul to the devil to make it home that night. If it wasn’t for prayer I don’t know if we honestly would have.