sunny otterspool
On a warm, sunny day in early March, Carrie and I met up at Otterspool for what turned out to be a lovely afternoon. We started off at the playground but progressed to a pleasantly long walk along the promenade toward the Britannia Inn, where Carrie so graciously treated us to hot chocolate. Tom and Becky had their bike and scooter respectively; Raspberry tried out Tom's bike once, with Carrie holding onto her but she wasn't confident enough to try again. It was an almost three-and-a-half mile walk there and back and Carrie encouragingly gave the kids targets to reach to keep them moving. As they ran and whizzed down the prom, the kids gleefully played a game of emergency, which involved collapsing and playing possum while the others ran over in mock [laughing] panic to save them. Near the end of our walk, Raspberry pointed out that no one had complained about the distance we walked, which was impressive when you're talking about little kids. We thought there'd be more time for them to play on the exercise machines but as one might expect, things with kids take much longer (even when they don't complain) so we had to nix that. Despite a moment of disappointment at not being able to hang out with our friends for longer, Raspberry still very much enjoyed her afternoon, as did Carrie and I, as we couldn't stop raving about it, because really, it was that nice a day.