Staycation Fail #iPPP

We just had a new baby, so going on any sort of ridiculously fun vacation just isn’t in the stars for us right now. In an effort to not have a horribly boring we-only-watch-TV summer, we’ve been thinking about things we could do that would qualify as a “staycation.”

Today, it’s rainy out (in spots). Aaron had the brilliant idea of going to a restaurant that had an indoor playground. He asked the question out loud, and the Animal’s ears perked up, “Playground!?”

That meant we had to go. In our area, there is only one restaurant with an indoor playground, so we gathered the kids up and ran out the door.

Quick aside: We live in the sticks. That means it takes — at minimum — twenty-five to thirty minutes to get somewhere. Sure, we can go to the greasy BBQ spot up the road, but they don’t have an indoor playground.

Off we went, the Animal in the back of the “big truck” saying, “Playground!? Eat?! Biiiig slide!?”

We kept telling him, “Yes! We’re going to a playground!”

Thirty minutes later, we’re still in the “big truck” and there is a stand-still with traffic. It was already 12:30, and the Animal was starving. Flash had begun to scream in his car seat, and Aaron and I were getting a little stressed.

Knowing that we wouldn’t ever get to this restaurant in a decent amount of time (we’d moved maybe 2 feet in more than 5 minutes), we pulled into the drive-thru of another restaurant and decided to drive quickly to our town park so the Animal would at least have a playground.

As quickly as we could, we hurried back to our neighborhood (another almost twenty minutes in the car) as I fed the Animal some apples we got from the drive-thru. Flash had finally fallen asleep, and we were certain we could beat the rain.

We pulled into the town park and realized that they were in the middle of serving lunches to our local elementary kids. That meant that the eating area was being used. Oops.

So, we rushed back home to use — duh — our own playground.