Day 20 - Hey, what kind of a playdate is this?

That's what my son said as I packed several plastic gloves and a trashbag for our playdate at the local park. I explained to him that we were going to meet another family at the park and pick up trash for 15 minutes before playing. I told my kids that it was going to be lots of fun and that we would be helping our community at the same time. Afterward, they could run around like crazy kids as long as no one found out I was their mother. They were happy with that answer, so we got out of the car and waited for our friends.

Our friends showed up and before we knew it, we were going down a steep trail searching for trash. My friend, Emily, showed up with her 2 inch heels :-) and was a trooper, she even went over the wooden rail just to pick up a few pieces of trash. After 15 minutes of walking and not finding much trash, we decided to hit the playground area of the park...where we found juice boxes, straws, cigarette butts (is butt one of those blooper words), plastic wrappers, candy wrappers, band-aids, something totally gross looking, wads of paper and lots of gum.

The kids started playing together and then it was time to go home for lunch. On the way home, I asked my kids what they thought of our playdate. The boys said it was boring to pick-up trash, but that they had fun playing tag. (I do teach them to be honest about things...maybe a little too much.) The good news is that a couple of seconds later, my son shared that even though picking up trash was boring, he was glad he did it because there were lots of little kids at the park today and eating cigarettes causes lung cancer. That was good enough for me.

Until tomorrow, have a great day!
Christina