Edness Kimball Wilkins State Park

Another week of residency down, several dozen to go! I'd start a paper chain countdown, but I've learned from experience that that is NOT a good idea for this sort of thing. I made a paper chain counting down Jared's first semester of med school in Grenada, and it only made me miserable when I'd cut off one piece every day and it didn't look any shorter overall. It's actually super weird to think back on that memory, remembering that at the time it felt like the end of training would literally NEVER come (I remember sobbing when I calculated that we were only 1/96th of the way done), and now we're practically finished.  And that memory weirdly doesn't feel that long ago. 

Anyway, it was another busy week for Jared. He did have Saturday off, and we spent a couple hours at the Edness Kimball Wilkins reservoir in the afternoon. Jack loved playing in the sand and going on the "boat" with us (an inflatable raft). His favorite part was chasing the birds away and yelling, "Go away birds!" and then as soon as they flew away he'd start screaming, "Birds! Come back!" Toddlers. 

It's not an enormous reservoir, but there weren't many people there so we really enjoyed having the time and space to relax. If Jared had more time off this summer, maybe we'd buy a summer pass and go every week. Unfortunately it's just far enough from our house that I know I wouldn't pack up Jack and all the beach stuff into the car by myself and go all that often without Jared. But I really enjoyed lounging on the raft under the shade of the tree, watching Jared dig in the sand with Jack and smiling that we've made it to this point. We came here once with Jack last summer, but now he's old enough to really enjoy outings like this.

And on the note of fun outings, Jack is VERY excited for our "outing" to the Roper reunion later this week. He has several dozen meltdowns every day that we can't go to grandma and grandpa's house "now" (or Nana's house, or Asher's house, or the Thanksgiving Point farm--there are daily meltdowns about all of those too). Tim is going to fly up to Casper so he can drive down to the reunion with me and Jack. Thanks Tim! It'll be so nice to have some company other than our Raffi Radio CD on repeat.