Let's Pretend

I recently read a blog post in which the mom wrote a pretend journal entry about her day - because she had realized that her kids really didn't remember much and therefore she could help them remember life however she wanted to. It involved joy, crafts, no fighting, wonderful memories made etc. Today I tried to have a day kind of like her pretend post.

Josh woke up earlier than usual and crawled into bed with me. He started telling me all of his imaginings (no wonder that kid has nightmares) from fire goblins in the ceiling, to other monsters hiding in my bookshelf, to some strage phenomenon that makes the computer glow green at night when he walks by it. We laughed at cuddled for a long time - anna joined us at some point. Then we had a good breakfast and got ready. We had nothing planned so we decided to go "hike" along one of the trails by our house.

It started out great the kids were excited to be alive and outside, and excited about Halloween, hence all the orange:) The goal was to look like "punkins"

They climbed on rocks,

looked at bugs, pretended to be frogs and bugs,

found forts,

played on the bridge, and made friends with some policemen on bicycles that gave them stickers (now Josh wants to be a policeman for Halloween - he was totally thrilled that they stopped and talked to him) This lasted about an hour. Interpersed throughout this time Anna would get frustrated that she couldn't climb where Josh could etc, but she was pretty happy.

Then, knowing that I had limited time before someone lost it we headed back.....we were about 15 minutes from the car when it happened. Anna completely lost it. I told her she had to either ride in the stroller or walk, everyone knows you can't carry a kid and push a stroller with a kid in it right? So she's standing up in the stroller, her face red from screaming, while I hold her hands on the handle of the stroller so she won't fall out - Josh is riding on the front (it was a single stroller, my double is not quiet durable enough for this kind of excitement). Then Josh falls off and I run over him, so naturally he decides to walk. They both end up falling and scraping up their knees and hands, but eventually we make it to the car. As I strap them in trying to be positive I say, "Thanks for going hiking with me it was fun, it's a beautiful happy day." Josh says, "No Mom it's a sad day because I got hurt." We go home and get six band aids for each of them, Josh finds a stick outside that he can use to hobble around on and spends the next 45 minutes before nap time telling me we will definitely have to get him a wheel chair, especially before the next time we go to Disneyland.

So what will my kids remember about this day? It's kind of depressing to think about....:-)

I know that I will remember it as happy at least. I realize this is a really crummy picture, and I only had my crummy camera with me, but I love how the rocks look against the blue blue sky:)