Boy Play Dates

Over the years, I have gained A LOT of experience taking girls on playdates with their friends, and I've gotten pretty good at it because they usually want to go shopping or out to lunch, and because...well, I'm a girl.   

Boys are a different story.  At 7 years old, we haven't yet had a lot of opportunity to take Mack out with friends.  And if there's something that he wants to do, usually he asks his dad before he asks me.  This summer, Mack has been asking to go to the skate park with his friends.  The friends' moms have taken the boys a couple of times, but I have not been as enthusiastic about the idea.  Today, though, I was long overdue to take my turn, so I bumped up my morning walk 30 minutes and made it home in time to shower and load scooters and boys into my car by 9:30.

I was totally in foreign territory with this play date because I've never actually been to a skate park before.  Usually I shop or eat lunch with the girls when I take them out, but I very definitely had no intention of scooter-ing with the boys today.  (And don't think i'm going to surprise you with a picture at the end of this post of me being daring on someone's scooter, because you'll be extremely disappointed.  There's a vast difference between a rope swing and a skate park in 100 degree weather.)  I brought a book to read, and of course, my camera.  So, I took a few pictures and then planted myself in the one shady spot on the one bench I could find, while three little boys skated back and forth in front of me.  

This was a funny conversation to listen to:


Friend #1:  (on the left)  Are you really going to do that?
Friend #2:  (he's the one with the green scooter) Yep!  Here I go!!
Friend #1:  (to Mack)  Are you going down there?
Mack:  No way... (and then he rode his scooter safely down the less steep side ramp)

I was kind of surprised at how much more daring Green Scooter Boy was than either of the other two.

Every now and then they would stop and take a water break or adjust their scooters.

When they were way too hot and tired to scooter anymore, we jumped in the van and went to Sonic for hot dogs and "purple drinks." 

Purple drink = Sprite, Powerade, cranberry juice, vanilla 

That didn't sound as good to me as it did to the boys, so I stuck with my usual Cherry LImeade with EXTRA ICE!  

On the way home, the boys planned their next adventure...the wakeboard park coming in sometime this fall...

It was hilariously funny to listen to them explain to each other how to do a 360 on a wakeboard when none of them has actually been on one in their little lives. 

Overall the morning was a great success and I have much more confidence in my capability as a "boy mom."