What We Did On Our Day Off

Many people with allergies hate the spring, but for me it's fall. I'm allergic to things that are dying.

My allergies get especially bad after a rain, and when you add in that overcast days make me SAD and that my body can't handle temperatures colder than 70 degrees, you can see why over the past few days, I've spent much more than my allotted eight hours asleep. I totally get why bears hibernate.

On Tuesday night before we got in bed, I checked the weather, which promised to be cold and overcast all day. I said, "I think I'll skip exercising the rest of the week, and maybe on Monday, the sun will have come out and I can feel motivation to do stuff again."

Then lo and behold, I woke up yesterday morning to sunshine. It was the universe speaking to me, and what it said was, "Get thee outside."


Sometimes my kids ask me why we can't live in the suburbs like everyone else. When we visit friends in Cary and Apex and North Raleigh, I covet their big and beautiful and less expensive homes, but I don't covet the suburbs. A lot of people love them, but they are not for me.

Except for Garner. I love the park in Garner, and when we are there, I daydream about buying a house in the neighborhood beside the park, and sometimes I even check out the house prices. What is so great about this park is the lake, and the mile long mostly flat trail, and the shade structure covering the playground, and the huge field. Lake Benson is the only park where my kids spend as much time climbing trees and collecting sticks and rolling in the grass as they do sliding down the slide and swinging on the swings.

Most days when the universe tells me to get outside, it is to Lake Benson that we head. It's not the closest park to our house, but it is our favorite and our best.

(P.S. What is so hilarious about the pictures in this post is that two out of three of the boys still have on their bike helmets.)