Ice Cream Picnic

Tuesday nights have somehow become our family night at the Club. When I drop him off for school on Tuesday mornings, Riley will say, "It's Tuesday. Do we get to eat at the golf club today?" For the most part, the kids are very good at the Club and it is good practice for them to eat out, use their manners, stay in their seats until everyone is done eating, etc. Tonight, however, was not one of those nights. Chase, at 10 months, has decided that he doesn't particularly care for napping at school. After spending roughly 9 hours there, you can imagine how tired he is after we pick him up. He likes to eat, so that is a good distraction up to a point, but after he's done eating, he is not afraid to let us (and the rest of the people eating dinner on the patio) know that he's just not feeling sitting in his seat patiently anymore. All wants he wants to do is GO TO BED. He is actually quite good at communicating this to us, even without being able to talk, so I suppose we should be happy about that. Still, it doesn't make his vocal protests any less painful. Casey finished eating his dinner and decided to take Chase home so that Riley and I could finish our dinners at a leisurely pace and enjoy some ice cream afterwards. Being my child, Riley was very excited about the ice cream and immediately lost all interest in his mac and cheese. He was insistent that we eat our ice cream sitting on the steps in the Club's dining room, right where everyone needs to be walking to get to their seats. Thinking this was not a great idea, I suggested that we take our ice cream outside and have a picnic in the grass overlooking the golf course. So for about 15 minutes, I got to sit and focus only on my time with Riley. We chatted, we watched people play golf, and we just generally enjoyed being outside indulging in some ice cream on a hot summer's day.