November 3, 2018

Date Night Jar: Picnics and Airplanes

Well we finally did one of the green activities from our date night jar-- in fact we did two of them!  When we created the list of activities and the jar, one of the categories was things to do out of the house but that could be unplanned, so things Cooper could come to that could be last minute.  We didn't draw one of those in August or September because most of our weekends were already pretty full.  In October we drew one to go on a bike ride, but the Cooper got sick so we didn't do it.  I asked David if he wanted to do it today, so we decided to try it.  Well then it was really windy outside, so we decided since neither of us had ridden a bike in over a year and a half, a windy day probably wouldn't be the best to try to learn to pull Cooper's trailer with the bikes. 

 But we did decide to draw a different one and try something else for the afternoon/evening.  I let Cooper draw two sticks that we could choose from.  We ended up drawing picnic and watching airplanes.  So we decided to combine them!  I turned to Google to try to find the best place to watch the airplanes takeoff and/or land at Dallas Love Field and it turns out there is a park right by the North edge of the airport that gives great views.  I saw there was a Chick-fil-a right down the road, so we decided on a Chick-fil-a picnic while we watched the airplanes.

You can't tell but it was super windy while we ate.  It was already a windy day and being by this little lake brought even more wind.  The airport is right on the other side of the lake behind David and Cooper.

We saw 3 planes land in the first 15 or so minutes that we were there.  They were so close and it was really cool!  The first few, Cooper got really excited and would yell "airplane!" and then look all around for them.

Unfortunately that excitement quickly turned to fear.  He started saying "car" over and over and we thought he was just pointing out cars driving by (because he does that a lot) but he was actually saying he wanted to go to the car.  He was done with the airplanes and the noise and dinner.

We decided to try sitting in the back of the car with the back open.  This shielded us from the wind and some of the noise of the airplanes and he seemed to do much better.  He still didn't want much dinner, but he was content to sit and watch everything around us.

And he finally decided to eat when I offered an RX bar.  This picture was taken right after a truck pulled up near us playing loud music--Cooper was happy as could be listening to the music and whenever they turned it down he'd say "more music."
We stayed until sunset (the last one before the time change!) and then headed home.  Even though it ended up not being Cooper's favorite thing in the moment, he talked about airplanes nonstop when we got home.  And it was neat getting to see them so close.  We'll definitely go back and try it another time-- maybe with Cooper's noise cancelling headphones next time.  It was so fun getting to try something different together!  I'm glad we have at least a few activities that include Cooper in our "date" night jar.

No comments: