Neighborhood Stroll and The Ark

Pretty much every morning that I am off of work, I wake up and say to myself, "today Owen and I are going to go on a walk!" I would say we actually end up going on a walk about 30% of those days. Today was one of the days that I decided we needed to get out of the house for some fresh air. So after Owen's morning nap I got all geared up in my running shoes and shorts, loaded Owen into the jogging stroller, and hit the pavement.

I promised myself that we would travel no less than 2 miles and that I would jog (rather than walk) for as much of that 2 miles as I could. (sidebar: I hate running) Approximately 10 feet from our front door I walked through a gigantic cloud of gnats. About 10 feet after that, I walked through another gigantic cloud of gnats. Since the street was pretty much deserted I moved off of the sidewalk and on to the street to escape the swarm of gnats that now seemed to be engulfing the entire neighborhood. I detoured from my usual walking route to head toward Wilson Elementary to see if there were any kids on the playground. I forgot that it was a holiday and the school was as deserted as my street. Soon after I turned the corner onto the main road, I noticed an old gray truck lingering for far too long at a stop sign even though no cars were coming in either direction. I immediately came to the conclusion that the truck held an axe murderer/kidnapper who was waiting specifically for Owen and me. I turned around and headed back to the house. My 2 mile walk ended up being only about 200 yards. Time spent jogging = zero seconds.

I still wanted to get out of the house so we went to "The Ark" at First Baptist in Coppell. The Ark is an indoor playground with 2 separate areas for big kids and little kids. It is free and open to the public most days of the week. We had only been one other time. Last time there were between 40 and 50 kids, this time there were 3. Owen is just starting to stand up on his own but isn't walking yet. He crawled and climbed and seemed to have a lot of fun. There were several times that I had to crawl at maximum speed inside the playground to keep up. My knees are bruised and I definitely had to push the limits of my aversion to germs but all in all it was a lot of fun.