Party at the Park

Today I had the opportunity to hang out with one of my best friend's kids. I have known this friend for almost 8 years and he is truly one of the best people that I know. Since the time that I met him as my seminary teacher, I have come to admire him, and love him and his family. For a while now, it has been a tradition for my siblings and I to send Christmas presents to his family, especially his children. Over the years, we have tried to stay close, and I try to spend time with him and his kids occasionally.


Every now and then Jayce, Janaya, and I will "kidnap" his children. Originally we did this because he stop letting us babysit his kids because we wouldn't take his money when he tried to pay us. So we decided that we would just take his kids and hang out, and then he would have no way to dispute because he can't pay us to hang out with his children. Anyway, it had been a while since we had seen his kids, so Jayce suggested that we once again kidnap the children.

I called him up to see if we could, because of course it is inappropriate to kidnap children without parental consent, and it turned out that the kids were available, so Janaya, Jayce, Christy, Caitlyn, and I took four children to the park. We decided that it would be fun to have a picnic and play at the park. When we went to pick the kids up, one of them ran around saying, I am hyper, I am hyper, I am so very hyper. We knew that we were going to have a fun time at the park.



When we got to the park, the kids immediately ran to the playground, so Janaya and Caitlyn decided to prepare the picnic while the rest of the adults played with the children. Pretty soon, the food was ready, and we all went to eat sandwiches, chips, carrots and capri suns. Around the picnic table there were some very hungry red ants, so Jayce and I got to carry children to the benches so they wouldn't get bit. One of the children ate a few bites of his food and proclaimed himself full. That was until he found out there were cookies, and all the sudden he had some room left. (Yes mother we made him eat more real food before allowing him to eat a cookie.) Soon, everyone was done eating, and it was back to the playground.
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I don't know what it is about kids, but their favorite activity seems to be racing. Now I am not in top athletic condition, and in addition to that, the pants that I was wearing do not stay up when I try to run, so I respectfully declined the invitation to race. Jayce got to run the majority of the races, but Christy and Caitlyn also took part. The rest of us hung to our somewhat lame excuses in order to not run.



I think we got the kids pretty well worn out, so it was back home. I asked the kids on the way home if they had fun. They all answered yes, and then came the excepts. Except when it was hot, except when I was sweaty, except when I was itchy, except when I missed my mom and dad. I guess a park in the summer is not as much fun as we had hoped. However, we were asked to return every Saturday, so apparently it wasn't all that bad.




So there you have it, a party at the park.