We Can't Escape the Inflatable Obstacle Courses

 I went for a jog on a sunny Saturday morning in March. When I was turning onto our street, my neighbor Mike Hartmann drove past and invited us to hike Tumamoc Hill with them. I went inside, scarfed down breakfast, and filled up water bottles, then we headed off to hike! 

Tumamoc is a paved trail up a very steep hill. It was nice because we could put Isaac and all the water in the stroller. We pushed through the burning calf muscles and made it up to a marvelous view of Tucson. Elliot was an absolute champ on the hike. Annie mooched rides in the stroller for a lot of the ride up, but liked running downhill. 

Our one plan for the day was to attend a town of Sahurita event advertised as "giant lawn games." We have no clue what this meant. By the time we got to the top of the hill, we realized we probably were going to miss the giant lawn games. Elliot was devastated. But the universe had plans to reward him for his diligent hiking. As we turned into our neighborhood, we saw people blowing up a giant inflatable obstacle course and a sign saying that there was a free party starting in 5 minutes. Perfect! 

This is why Rancho Sahuarita is awesome. There was free face painting, balloon animals, hot dogs, etc. Apparently this was a "new move in event" that they don't advertise, so there were no lines. I sent out some texts and soon it was somewhat of a ward party. 

Annie was scared to go on it at first, but we went together and she LOVED it. My girl is getting so big!

The facepaint made up for my feeble face painting attempt 1 week earlier at the Rodeo Roundup.

Elliot didn't want facepaint, but his buddy Kelton got this hilarious frog mouth getup. Kelton is my favorite of Elliot's friends.

Annie used some of her money to buy a rainbow snow cone, which she generously shared with her cash-strapped brother. 

After running 2 miles, climbing a small mountain, and then hitting up the party, I was outside for 7 hours in the sun and got my first sunburn of the year. We soaked up plenty of vitamin D!

The next morning, Elliot woke up puking. This is always unfortunate, but especially so since he was on the top bunk. His blast radius made it to the opposite wall. Annie wasn't feeling well either, so we holed up for a day of snuggling and napping. 

Life is full of surprises! Some good, some bad. I'm grateful that generally there have been far more good surprises than bad ones with our family.