Stay Calm and Find the Funny

Have you ever had a day go so completely wrong that you aren’t sure how to come back from it? When even your Plan B and C fail? Well today was supposed to be our adventure day, where we pick a new park or playground, hop into the car and go explore. I picked what looked to be a gorgeous park with a beautiful pond and dam that I thought would be so fun to explore. But man was I wrong?

So, what do you do when you have a van full of kids expecting a nature walk and possibly a playground. How do you turn a complete fail into something fun, something funny, or at least something you can learn from?

I’m not 100% sure, but this might help!

On our adventure, we found the “playground” that was supposed to be part of the park, which in fact was completely overgrown and sat in the middle of a field with no trail and not even remotely close to the pond. I’m not a playground snob but this was the saddest playground I’ve ever seen.

Finding the playground gave me hope, but we still couldn’t find access to this gorgeous, beautiful, wonderful park and after driving around for what seemed like forever, I finally pulled over and asked a local for help. She laughed and said that there was no public access. NO PUBLIC access to this amazing place!

After a 20 minute conversation on the side of the road with a wonderful, yet complete stranger we headed off for our back up plan, a nearby park with a pond and walking trail.

Only to realize that our plan B adventure was completely full, no parking space full, due a school field trip!

Now that I was 0 for 2, I was ready to call it a day and go home. Outnumbered by the cheering (or whining) in the back of the van to at least walk down and look at the water, I gave in and we did just that.

Within minutes, one had fallen and skinned her knee, another peed her pants, and the third was hysterical because I said we had to go back to the van to clean everyone up!

FAIL, FAIL, FAIL!

After changing clothes, wiping knees, and getting everyone settled back into the van, we headed home. Poor kids, their amazing adventure ended up being over an hour in the car with only a 5 minute nature walk.

Stay Calm and Find the Funny

 

We started to recap our morning. We laughed about the poor pitiful playground we first saw and talked how we could make it a more inviting place to play (ie. mow grass, pull weeds, plant flowers).

Then, B brought up the super nice local lady that we asked for help and how nice she was. We laughed about the fact that there is a gorgeous pond, dam, and park that is completely hidden from the outside world.

We listened to Tuna laugh and play with her extremely over-sized new outfit, as a result of her earlier accident.

We laughed about the extremely large frog that jumped up and scared Shrimp so much that she fell and skinned her knee.

We just laughed. Maybe out of delirium or extreme frustration but we laughed.

 

So, the next time (and trust me there will be a next time) your day, plan, or adventure completely fails remember to stay calm and find the funny. There will always be a funny.

And if that fails then splurge and take them out for ice cream or even worse fast food fries! 😉