Another Family Day

Mondays are pretty sacred in the Furr house. We generally ignore all phone calls and spend the day together. Today it was 80-degrees in Chicagoland. Matt suggested we go to a park, I believe the term was "explore." So I spent time packing a picnic lunch and preparing for said adventure.

It began to go slightly awry when Libby decided she'd take a super long nap. This endangered the good graces of older brother, who typically starts to go South around 11:30a. I pulled her from her bed at 11a and loaded her in the car seat. She sobbed. Once we all got on the road Izak (2.5y) decides he is going to stop using his "words" and just sits in the back seat yelling, "Please! Please!!" He was trying to demand water and pretzels, but we were ignoring him because he wouldn't ask politely. So about 9 miles into our journey and things didn't look good. We had located a state park that looked like it would be fun for picnicking and play... once we found it, we had to turn back because it was on fire. You heard me, as in flames and smoke. The give-away should have been the big tower of smoke that I spotted 5 miles away. It appeared to be a "controlled" burn, perhaps an old field. The sign on the sidewalk said "No access." Matt thought it was probably just for the bikers, since it was across the sidewalk. I assured him that since there were 5 acres of flames and the wind was blowing over the rest of the park, that perhaps we should find another place for the children... But by now they're sobbing and hungry, and things are not looking promising...

Leaving the park my comment was, "The first park you see, we're stopping. I don't care if it's in a subdivision. You pull this van over." We noted that the funeral home did have a nice basketball hoop, but no swings or slides for the kids, so we continued down the road until we came across a little lakeside park. We squealed into the parking lot at noon and ran for the swings. Ah, ideal picnic, soft breeze, the sound of the highway just off to our left, but hey! We were out of the van, and for the moment, not crying or screaming, "Please!!" After an hour we started the bittersweet journey home for naps. Note: Izak doesn't leave playgrounds gracefully.

It was a late start, but besides the forest fire and utter desperation of the park hunt panic, it was a really good day.