Saturday was a pretty nice day over the weekend, and rather than fall into the same TV-watching rut we seem to have been in since Christmas, Berta and I took the kids out to play at the Oasis Family Fun Center. I had taken the kids there once before myself, with Dan and his two kids. Abby and Riley had a pretty good time, and there was no reason to expect that they wouldn’t on this occasion, too.
The Oasis is a warehouse-style building that is somewhat off the beaten path. Inside, they’ve got miniature golf, redemption games, and - the reason why we went - a giant playground. It’s one of those playgrounds like they have at Chuck E Cheese’s, with the tubes that the kids climb in, but it’s enormous.
The playground has 4 big-kid slides and one for toddlers. A nice thing about this playground is that it has a toddler area. Too often, they want to go play with their older siblings and they just aren’t big enough. And yet, we ended up letting Riley crawl around in there, too.
Yes, yes - Berta and I both spent our fair share of time crawling through the tunnels with the kids. Riley particularly likes the fast slide. And Abby was insisting that I take her down the largest winding slide there, which meant crawling through all of the obstacles on the way to the top. She complained too vociferously that I needed to go down with her sitting in my lap. For some reason the longest slide seems narrower than the others, and I tried to explain that I couldn’t even sit upright in the tunnel.
Last time, when we went with Dan, Abby and I carried Riley all the way to the top of that thing, and all three of us went down in one solid lump of people. We got stuck going down a couple of times, and I swore that was it for me. I could see them removing me from the tube with a crane. Lovely.
I told Abby that my first time down with her was going to be my last, and when I finally told her I was going to let her sit on me, I explained that she had to get into the tube first in order for that to happen. Of course, when she was in the tube, I shoved her down under the pretext of “making room”, and then came down after her. When I met her at the bottom she was raving about how she did it all by herself, and there was no stopping her from doing it a dozen more times - all on her own.
Riley had his own trials. In the toddler area there is a nicely padded climbing course that ends in the only slide for toddlers. The climbing course is the only way to get to the top of the slide. Last time, Riley was thwarted by a section of the course that is like walking on a wide yellow-padded plank, supported by netting on either side. It was too squishy and rocking for his liking, and he wouldn’t cross it. When I carried him across, he would bolt to the slide and whoosh down all on his own, screaming in delight.
This time, he had only a mild initial hesitance on the plank thing, crossing it quite easily on all fours. But he would get stuck at the top of the slide. He just wouldn’t go down by himself. This was unfortunate, since he didn’t require help in the obstacles to get there, and I ended up having to frequently chase him all the way to the top just to get him to slide down.
Riley also had fun playing in the foam blocks just outside the toddler area. Abby and I played some Star Trek: Voyager video game, shooting the Borg. She did surprisingly well with the “Reload!” (“Recalibrate your phaser!”) conspet, wher eyou have to shoot off-screen to reload your gun. Her aim wasn’t exactly the best, though. I perhaps shouldn’t have been playing a shooting game with her - yeah, yeah.
After Berta and I were exhausted from the playground, we went over to Granite Run Mall. We hadn’t been there in a long time. It’s surprising because we used to go there so frequently before we were married. Not much had changed, really.
We stopped at the comic store where Chris used to work. Mike, the owner, was there and we said hello. He seemed to recognize me, though he couldn’t place me, but at least there was some recognition. I suppose that the challenge there is that Mike doesn’t look like he owns the store, and so picking him out among the other Warhammer gamers is something that only someone who knows him can easily do. It makes me feel like I know somebody, if you know that feeling.
We left there quickly - Abby had spontaneously punched Riley in the face for some unknown reason - and found the books store and the movie store. Nothing has really changed there, either. The book store has the same lousy selection. The movie store has the same overpriced tripe.
We ended up eating at Sbarro. I had some pizza, which I had been craving for a while. Abby ate spaghetti, and Berta ate a few bites of the ziti she got to share with Riley. When we were younger, we used to make special trips to Granite Run just for the baked ziti at Sbarro. Riley sure seemed to enjoy it, since Berta didn’t eat much.
Have I mentioned that Abby hates shopping? She does not like the mall. It was a chore to convince her to check out the toy store. Where is this kid from?
Back on our way home, we cracked open the box of Peanut Butter Patties I bought from the girl scouts camped in front of the Wawa near home. There were girl scouts everywhere. There were some at both Wawa entrances, in front of the Oasis doors, and at one of the entrances to the mall. All of them were selling cookies. All of them had that same fold-up table. All of the cookie boxes were arranged the same way. Are girl scouts creepy, or is it just me?
Anyway, Berta and I had made a big deal about the cookies. “Can I have one of those shrimp biscuits, Mommy?” “Why, yes, Daddy - Here is your shrimp biscuit.”
This deception lasted until Sunday night when Abby decided to be adventurous and insisted on trying a “shrimp biscuit”. “This doesn’t taste like shrimp.” “How would you know?”
We made her work for it, though. I forced her to sound out the words on the box to determine what the biscuits really were. She did eventually get it, with much cajoling, and was quite pleased with herself afterwards.
This morning, she was regaling the story to Nana. How silly Mommy and Daddy were to have thought those Peanut Butter cookies were Shrimp Biscuits.
Eventually she’ll catch on and probably hate us.
