Blog Challenge: Great Adventure #33

It was the morning after Ebony’s second birthday, and though that may not sound like a particularly likely day for a hangover, we were all a little worse for wear. The problem with second birthday parties is that they start quite early, and though I managed to stay off the wine until after 3:30pm, I then continued to indulge until bedtime. You see the other thing about second birthday parties is that, even when they are a success, they’re quite stressful. Setting up, tidying up, and tightly crossing fingers that toddler meltdowns are avoided, are all tiring jobs, so I felt I’d earned my glass of wine. And the one after that.

After a morning spent nursing a poorly head, and a lunchtime snooze on the sofa, we decided we’d have to head out for some fresh air. Ebony was full of energy and showing little concern for my headache, so we hoped the fresh air would tire her out. We drove to Vernon Park, a small but beautiful park not far away, and set off in search of an adventure.

We had planned to go a certain way, but Ebony had other ideas, and since she is now officially two (aka potentially terrible) and I had one eye clamped closed because of my wine headache, we decided to follow her lead. Ebony has a habit of sticking her hands in her coat pockets as she walks, it is very cute but also slightly dangerous when on a steep incline, so Laurie ran ahead (because she had marched off) to hold her hand. Together they ran down the hill, and I stumbled begrudgingly after them.

Once we reached the bandstand, Ebony climbed up and started running round and round in circles. Laurie started running the opposite way, and Ebony kept getting faster and faster. After a while they started running together, climbing on and off the bandstand as they ran around. Once they had exhausted all directions and speeds for running, we set off towards the woods. It was very muddy in the woods, and was starting to go dark. We had a look at the view, and then splashed our way across the puddles littering the floor of the woods. There are a few fallen trees to climb, and lots of mud to slide in.

Pretty soon it was going dark and time to head back to the car. It was a pretty successful great adventure in terms of tiring Ebony out, but we didn’t spend much time investigating the beauty of nature - I’ll blame the hangover for that.