Scenes from a Park

It's Wednesday and I'm not at work, so that means its...Park Day!  I've mentioned several times that we live several minutes away from this big, cool park that is vacant during the week (except on Good Friday).  It is well equipped with picnic tables, several playground areas, swings, slides, walking trails, mazes, etc.  And here's what Aidan decided to do at the park:

They have a big fishing pond out there, and there were not enough pine cones and sticks in it when we first arrived.  Well, there's enough now.  Aidan was a man on a mission.  And yes, I have been playing with my Photoshop Elements, in case you were wondering.  He also took advantage of being in the Great Outdoors by peeing on about 11 different trees.  

He does love variety.  

When he was done throwing sticks and pine cones in the water, he decided to try the swings:
Dane, on the other hand, decided it was a perfect day for dolphin-riding.

Quick story:  Last fall, a photographer came to Dane and Aidan's school and took the best pictures that exist of my boys.  Other than the semi-cheesy pumpkin props and "fall-themed" background.  They were looking at the camera, smiling real smiles, and not off-center.  

I have very high standards indeed when it comes to pictures of my children.

I asked Dane what the photographer did that made him and Aidan smile so good.  Dane's answer: "He had a frog in his pocket.".  Well.  Of course.  

The Frog photographer came back yesterday for the spring pictures.  I got the boys dressed in some blue and green "spring shirts" and sent them off for picture day.  I was a little concerned about the possibility of bunnies and flowers in the background, and my two strapping boys having to hold a delicate basket filled with pansies.  So yesterday after school, I go about my twice-weekly exercise of pumping Dane for information.  According to very reliable reports, no bunnies appeared in the pictures, but there was a bridge with white flowers on it.  (Inward moan).  "But mom, me and Aidan got to hold baseball bats and baseball stuff for the picture."

Ah.  Nothing says spring at our house more than dressed up little boys, holding (hopefully fake) baseball bats while standing on a flowered bridge.  (Can you imagine if someone had given Dane a REAL baseball bat to hold?  In a room with other people in it??) 

But they have to be better than the school pictures of Dane last year.  It had all the makings of a cute-kid-picture.  Plain background, cute gender-neutral red wagon for precious children to sit in, no flowers.  And smiling Dane, with hair going every direction and wearing a hand-me-down pale blue t-shirt with the words "New Orleans" and a skyline across the front.

We might have forgotten it was picture day that year.  And lest you think we regularly send our children to school like that, it was an especially difficult morning at our house that day.  Multiple meltdowns were had because Dane refused to wear this shirt or that one, and he finally Just Put On A Shirt So We Can Leave Already And We're Already Late.  I did recall hearing something about picture day when I dropped him off at school that morning.  Little Susie looked so cute in her hair bow and curls and matching smocked dress.  And look at that kid, in his button-up and coordinating sweater vest.  The other parents probably thought there was a new boy in class who unfortunately had lost his home in Hurricane Katrina and was forced to stay with his great-aunt in Houston, and no one had bothered to buy him a new shirt for school. 

That poor child.