Our "Quiet" Weekend

Early Friday morning, Craig and Jacob left for a trip up to Canada for a junior lacrosse tournament involving teams sponsored by NLL teams like the Knighthawks.  That left just me and Carter as a duo for the weekend, and I decided that I needed to make it a good one so Carter didn't feel left out being left behind (again).  I figured we could do some things he would like to do that Jacob wouldn't.  It ended up being a ton of fun, with the added bonus that I didn't have to spend the weekend refereeing between the boys or yelling as much as I normally would.  Of course, Carter has been having his moments lately, including a pretty awful report on Friday when I picked him up at daycare.  He's picking up some bad habits, though I can't tell if it's from watching Jacob, or managing the stress of being picked on by Jacob, or the result of a couple months of late bedtimes (as he stays up so long after bedtime in his room), or just normal three-year-old boundary pushing.  We had a chat about it and I told him that another bad report would cause the removal of the Batcave he just inherited from storage...so hopefully that works.  He remembered that fact yesterday morning still, so I'm crossing my fingers it sticks.

Anyway, I had a nice "me day" on Friday with a freebie day off of work (we get two "free" Fridays per summer), and I did some shopping to use up rewards, had some lunch, and went off to a GI appointment, which resulted in the scheduling of an endoscopy in a couple weeks.  Yay.  More on that later.  We had a quiet dinner at home and an uneventful bedtime Friday night.

Saturday ended up being a lazy day.  Carter was up pretty early and we both ended up being in our PJs until after lunch.  We watched shows, played a bit, and generally took it easy.  I was pretty tired, but part of the laziness was that I knew we were planning on going to the beach in the afternoon so I wasn't planning on showering or anything since I knew I'd want to do that later.  It took a while to get going, including an unscheduled visit to the pool store to buy chemicals for our suddenly green pool.  We got to the beach mid-afternoon, and it was a perfect beach day.  It was around 80, and with the lake breeze it was perfect!  Carter was not thrilled with getting sand in his sandals, but eventually I got him down closer to the water.  The beach was busy but not crazy and we got a great spot about 10 feet from the water.  We laid down a blanket and brought out all of our sand toys!

We had a blast building castles, digging, dumping, and pouring water.  I took frequent trips to refill our water buckets, and Carter was so content just sitting and playing!

I don't think I've ever done this particular mold so perfectly!

My finished project, before Carter started destroying it!

Near the end I convinced my water-averse little boy to walk down to the water with me and let the water hit his feet.  He giggled with glee as the water hit them, and said it tickled!  Our feet sunk into the sand and we talked about a quicksand book that we read at bedtime.  It made me so happy to see him discovering new things and having so much fun!  It was such a nice, relaxing afternoon that I hated to leave, but it was getting to be dinner time and we had more on our agenda!

We walked back up to the car (with a stop to dump sand out of his sandals), dropped off our beach stuff, and wandered over to the carrousel!

We've been here before with both kids, but it's been a while!  And now that I know how much Carter loves rides, I was excited to bring him here.  He picked a bunny to ride!

He was so giddy as we waited for the ride to start!

Happy boy mid-ride!  Love that smile!

After our ride, we walked over to the walkway along the river, right where it heads out toward the lake.  There wasn't a lot to see, but we saw a few boats and a bunch of ducks. 

Looking through the railing

Sculpture near the walkway

Real seagull on the lamppost...couldn't resist!

Carter got in a bit of a running mood after this, constantly wanting to run way ahead of me and not wanting to go back to the car.  Even though he admitted he was hungry, I think the new space to run and explore was too much of a draw for him!  I snapped a couple pretty flower pictures as I convinced him to come to the car with me, though!

We went to Wendy's for dinner, which was his choice, and enjoyed some Frostys when we got home, before he headed off to bed.

Sunday we went to church and then rushed home to eat lunch and head out to the movie theater.  It was a 90 degree day with thunderstorms in the forecast, so I decided that would be a good opportunity to head to the theater and finally see Finding Dory!  Jacob didn't want to see it so we skipped it when we went to the drive-in a while back.  I figured we could hit up a matinee and avoid the midday heat.  The matinee was still more expensive than I'd like, but when you have the chance, sometimes you just have to do it--and since our previous day's activity cost $2 total, I figured it was fine.  And we got dollar store candy to bring with us, so that was even better.

When we sat down, Carter was so excited, and with each preview he got even giddier!  It was so adorable to see him so happy.  We both loved the movie, although I could tell that he was sad in parts, especially when it seemed like Dory wasn't going to find her family.  He'd grab my arm and recap what was going on on the screen, and it was so sweet.  Of course, when the movie was over, he didn't want to leave!  We ended up wandering down to the mall play area and he played there for a while since it was too hot outside for a real playground.  He had fun climbing and sliding and playing with one of the activities on the wall, and then he wanted to sit in all of the ride-on vehicles on a little island nearby.  It took some effort to get him out of there, but all in all, it was a fun afternoon.

The big boys came back in the evening, and unfortunately we had a really rough night with Jacob as he settled back in to having Carter around again.  We have a very challenging road ahead of us to get those two in a good place, as well as Jacob and me.

But for one weekend, it was nice to have a little time to enjoy Carter and dive into some of the things that he enjoys.  With Jacob's lacrosse schedule we could be having more of these, but for now I will savor these times with my sweet little guy.