Parks: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Park Day! Head out on a Southern California vacation and say you spent a day at "the parks" and most people think you mean Disney, Knott's, Legoland (ugh!), Universal Studios or any of the other plethora of theme park dotting the landscape of Orange and San Diego Counties.





Those people don't know my family.
Every year we offer the boys their choice of "parks" and they un-
equivocally and routinely say "Uh, no thanks, that doesn't sound like fun." Alien children! Just to make sure we heard right, Bill and I counter with "Are you sure. You know they have a Simpson's/ Buzz Lightyear/ Snoopy ride, right? Still, no?" Which is predictably followed with "If you guys want to go, I guess we can go." As if Bill and I are just dying to stand in 2 hour + lines to ride It's a Small World. (We checked Anne's Disneyland wait times app, just for kicks to see how crowded it was.) No, parks for us on vacation means finding the best park in the city and riding our bikes to it's playground, to stay for however long we want taking in the sun and air. Now when the park shares a name with a V.I.P. member of the family, well that is just a bonus.


Bill Barber Park in Irvine was a nice 10 mile round trip bike ride to a gigantic city park equipped with pools, play
grounds, baseball and soccer fields, and heaven only knows what else. The boys stayed in the playground area having Bill time them as they did "Ninja Training". Ninja Training amounted to running self made obstacle courses over and over trying to beat their previous times. After our mini-ninjas had been trained, we had to shoot some pictures with Bill and his park. He had scouted some locations on his bike to find just the right signs.


After our fun morning at Bill Barber park (that is just fun to type) we grabbed lunch and headed to Anne's place where we wanted to hike around a wilderness park in her area while Bill biked it. Immediately after paying for parking, the ranger let us know all the trails were closed due to the rains and flooding. We wouldn't give up our walk and found another trail behind her neighborhood. Our last park of the day was Oak Park, and this is where it got ugly. The boys were playing while waiting for Anne and Q to meet us there before dinner. While they were waiting Romney took a hard smack to the forehead when he slipped and fell off the playgrounds zip line. He was in so much pain as we rushed to get ice and Tylenol from a drugstore. With our family histories, Bill and I take head injuries very seriously, and decided we would rather be safe than sorry and rushed Romney to the E.R. to be looked at. Luckily, his pain subsided, the Dr. checked him out and felt confident he was OK and released him to go home. William felt so guilty since he had been the one who was pushing Romney before the fall. Quentin invited William to hang out with him instead of the E.R., but William would not leave Romney's side. Romney came out of the E.R and heard that and said "My life just wouldn't be happy with out William". To which William responded "I would just die without you, Romney." This was especially nice to hear after having to referee an argument about an hour before the fall. Romney and I were both more snugly than ever (and he likes to cuddle) after that scare. We sat in the back seat together the entire way home with him leaning on me and holding both my hands.