Today we were being visited by my in-laws. Rather than wait around for them to arrive and have both kids underfoot as we attempt to get the house ready I decided to take Andrew out of the equation and take him kayaking with me. This would give us a little time together out of the house and give Allison one less kid to entertain/worry about. It also helped that she could go to the store with only one of the kids. Andrew tends to make the supermarket visit a bit challenging.
Andrew did pretty well in the kayak with me. Having the whole seat to himself was a plus. He didn’t fidget around, too much and I only had to have him pull his hands out of the water a couple of hundred times. At one point I splashed him a bit with the paddle to get his attention. He loved it and wanted to be splashed more. That backfired.
We took our double kayak out for the first paddle of the season. We loaded up the kids and drove out to Coonamessett Pond. We started with the kids in the front cockpit of the double and me paddling in the back cockpit. Allison was paddling my kayak. That configuration worked pretty well for a little while before the kids decided that they did not want to sit together or rather Andrew didn’t want to sit still. He also wanted to paddle with Allison, in the blue (my) kayak. He wouldn’t sit still so we moved him to the boat with Allison. This wasn’t ideal so we found a place to land and Allison took the double and I got into the single. Both kids were still in the front until Andrew decided to crawl from the front to the back while we were out on the water. Nobody fell in so I think it was a successful trip.
We hit the beach later in the afternoon and when we got home Allison told me that I had some messages from our friends. We had invited them to watch the fireworks tomorrow night. Our messages got crossed and they were on their way to us tonight. It was actually great that they came tonight because we were able to spend some good time together and have a nice night.
They arrived and it was time for Eva to go down the street to put on her concert for the neighbors. She didn’t get to perform her song at the Fourth of July parade yesterday so one of our neighbors invited her over to do a little concert in the backyard. So, we all went over and watched Eva. She did great. Each time she sings her song she gets better and better.
We had a nice cook out and then we took the kids to the duck pond. Four kids, four bags of bread and lots of geese, swans and ducks. There was one moment when the three girls were walking down the street hand in hand skipping. It was adorable.
