Just About the Most Perfect Weekend EVER! Gosh!*

(*Said in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite, dang it!)

I'm not even sure where to start.

Okay. I lie. I'll start at the beginning.

For the first time in forever, if not EVER, Ron got both Saturday and Sunday off. Unprecidented! After I got out of work on Saturday, we left Sam with Gramma Shirley and headed to Binghamton to visit with our friends Jeff, his fiancee Heather, Dan, and his girlfriend Casey. Jeff and Dan are my buddies from Alfred. We had a great night. We had supper at a local Mexican Restaurant (man, those Corona Lights were going down WAY TOO EASY!), and then retreated to Jeff' for "Game Night." Board games! Did you forget they existed! FUN! We got home around 1am.

The next morning, Ron and i arose for the weekly Corning Hiking Club. It was just the two of us this week, so i suggested we drive a little bit to start the hike
in a new spot. We parked at our vet's office in South Corning and went from there. We ended up at the Community College where we hung out on a pond's dock for about 45 minutes, looking at the clouds, the ducks, the scuttlebugs on the water, and each other. :-) The weather was crisp and refreshing.
We hiked into Spencer Crest Nature Center and out the other end, to hike back down directly to our house. We guestimated that we walked about 7.5 miles and we were gone for 4 hours. It was so nice to have "just you and me" time with Ron.

We put Sam down for a nap, and when he awoke at 3, we ventured to Eldridge Park in Elmira, specifically to ride the carousel. I had heard about it being refurbished last year. Ron climbed up on "Eddie" and propped Sam between his legs.
Sam instinctively grabbed onto the brass pole with both hands and never let go! There was a lot of chatter before the ride started about how FAST it was! It was goin' pretty good, that's for sure. Sam looked very "contemplative" throughout the ride, but I was picking up that he liked it a lot. It was so fun to watch him experiencing something new and fun; i find great joy in observing this in him.

As if our day wasn't full enough already, I suggested to Ron that we check out Harris Hill, where we got married. There is a kiddie ride section there, and I had been feeling for a couple weeks that Sam might be ready to try em out. So we went.

And he was ready!

We put him on three rides: the Tugboat, the Firetruck, and the Airplane. All three go in a slow counter-clockwise fashion! As he was smiling and very visibly and clearly enjoying himself, I was beaming. I said to Ron, you never know how a kid will react. He could either smile gleefully or scream, not wanting any part of it. Happily, the former occurred. Funnily though, on the airplane ride, he didn't crack a smile the whole time. The lady next to me said, "he's a very serious pilot." Laffing, i replied, "well, we don't want the pilot
laffing and not paying attention!" It was really comical to watch, though.

We went home, had supper and gave Sam a bath.

But not before we did the "Mommy Dance" from all of our belted-in seats! Ron's lyrics, of course!

It was very easily the best, most exhilerating and simply HAPPIEST two days Ron and I (and Sam!) have had since our wedding day. We felt so alive. I love embracing that feeling when i recognize it.