I Got Sunshine...

You know when you expect a day to be sunny and warm because, well, the weatherman TELLS you it's going to be, and you live in California, and it's supposed to be sunny and warm, damn it!? And then you wake up and it's overcast over your head and downright storm-cloudy in the distance? And even though it's almost mid-April, you still need a long-sleeved shirt AND a sweater. And you had awesome plans to fly remote control helicopters at the park and have a picnic lunch? Well, let's be honest, your husband and his new friend (who is of course the husband of your friend) are the ones who are going to fly remote control helicopters. You're going to focus more on the picnic lunch part. But now you can't take the copters out because it's windy and rainy and so you have to scrap the whole outing? You know those days? Yeah, usually, they suck.

But today, instead of canceling and sulking, we decided to switch out the remote control copters for kites. Kites like wind. Kites are easy and have no loud motors to freak out the child (Ethan is just not a fan of whirring engines; Power Wheels make him twitchy, poor kid). So we stopped at Target, picked up a two pack of kites--one Spider*Man and one Barbie. We truly didn't intend to buy into gender stereotypes (I'm working on a post about this), but that's the pack Ethan picked out. If he'd grabbed onto the one that was Barbie and Disney Princesses, that would have been fine too. And then we headed over to our friends' house, Husband peering up at the sky every few minutes, "thinking aloud" about whether it really might be clear enough for the helicopters. While rain drops fell on our windshield. Poor Husband.

When we got to our destination, we headed over to the local park, assembled the kites and let the "No, Daddy!!! I fly the kite!!!!"'ing begin. Note to self: Next time, bring Husband his own kite.

You can't see it because of the kites, but there's a big happy face in there.

Note: Serious Action Sequence Below. Also? So. Much. Happy.

Until...

Ethan's kite went a little too high, flapped a bit too loudly in the wind and freaked him right out. He became very afraid that the kite was going to fly away because it was too windy.

Which, HaHa! Your kite's not going to fly away, kid! That's so funny! Don't be afraid! Except, less than five minutes later, that's exactly what happened to his friend's kite. She let go of it, it caught a draft and we watched that little Barbie kite fly like the freaking wind into the stratosphere, her dad running after it through the entire park, hoping it would lose it's draft and nose-dive to the ground. It did not. The last we saw it, it was a tiny sparkling fleck against the clouds, somewhere over the neighborhood adjacent to the park. Never to be seen again (by us, at least). Which got this response out of him:

The Horror. Also? The Hungry. The Tired. The I'm Bored With This Kite Flying Thing Now.

After the park, and the run-away kite scarring our children forever, we went back to our friends' house for picnic lunch (inside, by the fire) and then the kids took off to play Play Dough and dressed up as tutu-clad firemen (again with the fun gender identification of preschoolers).

The grown-ups broke out the Cranium Turbo and giggled for the next hour watching each other behave ridiculously for the sake of moving forward on the game board. My friend's husband (who was my teammate) can charade the shit out of "Hangover" (seriously, all he had to do was lean forward, put his hands on his knees, exhale and I jumped up, shouting, "HANGOVER!!!") and me? I can apparently hum the Super Freak like a pro. But I cannot draw sideburns with my eyes closed and I do not know the origin of the car name "Volvo" (and I'm sorry, but Latin for "I roll" does NOT sound right to me, Mr. Cranium).

So sure, it rained and was cloudy and cold almost all day long. And that was a bummer. But we laughed and ran and played anyway, and it was awesome.