Sunday, August 14, 2011

Summer Happenings

Last week, Mols and Trav were in town for five days so Molly could do some work in Seattle. This gave me two whole days of solo time with Trav. Our adventures included...

A visit to my work to catch the Blue Angels practice for Seafair. Hey, there's a fountain coming out of my head!






















Forced child labor. :-) It's crunch time for finishing up my job duties before I leave in September (after nine years!) to do school full-time, so I need all the help I can get.
















I rewarded Trav for his hard office work with beach time at Golden Gardens. Sadly, no pic, but I can give you a quick overview. The day was sunny and gorgeous, and Trav had a blast digging around in the sand with other kids. The two of us also played frisbee on the grass and this other ball game where you try to catch a tennis ball on these discs that have velcro. We played both of these games for about 45 minutes to the tune of Luther Vandross's Here and Now, which one gentleman beach-goer had looped and blaring from his own boom box. Awe-some. You'd think the song was finally over, but no. It would seamlessly start over again without missing a beat.

There was a moment during the sand play time when my attempt to help wrangle a woman's runaway beach umbrella (flying toward the group of kids - gah! I thought someone would end up impaled by that thing or clocked on the head) distracted me from watching Trav as closely for about 30 seconds (normally I worry about hovering TOO much), and suddenly I didn't see him any more! Feelings of panic, panic, panic while trying not to panic. It didn't take me long catch sight of him again, but I felt like *minutes* had gone by. He'd moved down the beach to help other kids build a little waterway in the sand, but geezopete. I had flashes of mini-nightmares, imagining telling Mols that I lost her son. I know this kind of thing happens with kids sometimes (they're quick). I wandered away from my parents in stores when I was a kid, but I was freaking out on the inside for a bit there. Yikes.

The next day we hung out with dinosaurs. This one spit water!


































Trav & a T-Rex, neither one looking very impressed.






















And a hippo.
















Trav and I raced all the way to the zoo. Four hours (!!!) and one ice cream cone later, we headed home. He was all ready to race back, while I was moving at a slower pace. How do kids have so much energy?

Trav got into my game obsession on the X-Box 360 (as he likes to call it, by its full name). Peggle! He quickly became very good at the game, and we had lots of fun playing multi-player together. When a shot would go nowhere, we would say, Aw man, you threw it all away!














It was a great time. I love my nephew so much! One of my favorite moments happened when Trav was talking to me from the back seat of the Scion upon our arrival at Trader Joe's. I had just teased him about something a minute ago, and he climbed out of his seat to stand up saying, "Bacon. You're kicking my leg." I was like, What??? because I was sitting in the front seat still, and he was standing in the back, so I didn't understand how I could possibly be kicking his leg. It was physically impossible. Something wasn't adding up. He repeated, "You're kicking my leg." After another brief, confused pause, I realized he was using a line I'd said to him before to indicate that I was joking. Trav, I'm just pulling your leg.

:-)

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