Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Volcanoes

I was on a short business trip two weeks ago...or so I thought. Then a volcano blew up in Iceland, and my stay got extended 4 extra days. I was one of the fortunate ones with a place to stay, a rental car, and plenty of work to do.

Eva was home with 2 sick kids (and Quinn is almost never sick). Thankfully, Eva's mom and family helped out while I was gone (Danke!!!)

Coming home loaded full of guilt (and Godiva for Eva), I took the kids for as much of the weekend as my patience could muster. The weather really helped out.

I also got a nice reminder of how very nice and valuable a nice, tightly packed neighborhood is. We started out by going to our 'park'...Quinn saw some kids leave the playground, only to start kicking the soccer ball around. Quinn shyly wanted to play as well, so we went together to ask if we could join. After a few minutes, there were a number of 3-4 year olds and their parents kicking the ball around.

Later, Quinn saw a pile of rocks and started throwing them (not allowed!)...and some of the other kids followed suit. So, I quickly created a new game of 'toss the rock in the hole' to try to allow the kids to throw rocks, yet to give the parents the feeling that no one was going to get an eye poked out. By this time, Emily was awake, and I was holding here in her Baby Björn.

We ended up taking one girl home (who I said I'd look after since the mother had to take her younger daughter home), and Quinn ended up playing with his new playfriend in the playground near her house. I chatted with the mother for a while, who was grateful that I looked over her daughter for a while.

After Quinn's nap, Quinn started playing with an older boy that lives next door...a very well behaved boy...Those two were running around like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. When I hadn't seen them for a while, I started looking in the park, hiding behind the bushes so as to not be seen, and they were just sitting there playing in the dirt with fallen twigs / switches. Very cute.

Sunday was more of the same...but in the afternoon, Quinn, Emily, and I watched our local football team play their first game of the season.

The point of all this is the value of the neighborhood: we live in a pretty dense city (probably about 5000+ people per square mile), yet we have some really nice parks right in our backyards. We know or recognize most of the kids or parents, and it gives me a great warmth inside to see my kids play with other children and to watch out for other children.

More pics to come shortly...I'm a bit behind with the posts...