Charlotte's Picnic

Knowing that I wouldn't be comfortable traveling later in the summer, we planned a family vacation to the beach for Mother's Day weekend.  But then the tornadoes came through and we were all ready to be home with power again and didn't want to continue the refugee mode of living that we had been in for the past week and so we cancelled our trip.  It was the right decision at the time, but as the summer went on and more and more people went on trips to the beach I began to really regret the decision and the fact that we weren't going to go on a family vacation this summer.

So Jason and I came up with a plan to have a little family day in our area.  We chose our anniversary since it was on a Friday already and Jason took off of work to spend the day with us.  Charlotte had fallen in love with the idea of picnic's ever since watching the Minnie's Picnic episode of Mickey so we decided to take her to a nearby museum that has a children's play area and then go on a picnic.  It was probably the best decision we could have made while staying in town -- Charlotte loved it!

We made the mistake of telling Charlotte that we were going on a picnic on Thursday afternoon so she woke up Friday morning ready to go on her picnic RIGHT THEN.  She was also a little worried that her picnic was going to get "ruined" since Minnie's picnic gets "ruined" for a short time with spilled lemonaide on the show.  We kept convincing her that her picnic wouldn't get ruined but gray skies and the threat of rain on Friday had me frantically trying to come up with an alternate picnic location so that I wouldn't be made a liar!

We started out at a nearby museum that has a great children's area.  Charlotte LOVED the water table and, after a few minutes, enjoyed exploring the rest of the area although she kept going back to the water table.

Even though she had been excited about her picnic for almost a day at this point, surprisingly to us, we couldn't get her to leave!  She kept wanting to explore the rest of the museum once her time in the children's area was finished!  It appears that she has inherited her Daddy's love for history!

We were finally able to convince her that it was time for her picnic and she relented to leaving the museum.  We had brought some sides with us along with utensils, etc in a real picnic basket that we got as a wedding gift five years ago and planned to run by Sonic and pick up a (super healthy!) picnic lunch.  But when we pulled into the Sonic parking lot the Sonic had closed!  That was a sad discovery because I was looking forward to tator tots but we reached a quick new plan and went to a local chicken place to pick up some tenders and fries.  Charlotte didn't really care one way or the other as long as we were going to her picnic!

It was a little bit of a struggle to get the picnic basket, blanket, drinks, and Charlotte all across the busy street to the picnic area that we wanted to go to, but we did manage it.  Charlotte was so excited and it was so much fun to see!  We spread out our picnic blanket and started getting everything set up and she was just bouncing all over the place with excitement.  The clouds ended up being the best thing for our picnic because it kept the day cool instead of brutally hot and also let us end up being the only people in the area instead of having to fight off others for a picnic area.

Even with the clouds it got hot and Charlotte's hair kept bothering her so I ended up twisting it up and trying to secure it with her bow.  She looked even more grown up with a french twist!  We had a great picnic!  Charlotte is STILL talking about it and any time she walks past the blanket that we used she points out that it's our picnic blanket and that "Charlotte's picnic NOT ruined!"  We're very glad that Jason got to join us for the day and we got to make some special memories with Charlotte!

After a relaxing afternoon, Jason and I went out for our anniversary to our new favorite steakhouse and then to a night away at a local hotel.  It was a great way to spend our 5th anniversary....with our little girl and anticipating the arrival of our little boy!  I'm pretty sure we couldn't have imagined anything this wonderful when we got married five years ago.  I wouldn't trade it for anything!