Adventure Girls!

What do you do with your kids when it's cold or hot or raining or - well, you get the picture... This time of the year we stay off the beaten path so that we're not picking up every germ imaginable. But before I go on...

 I should introduce to you my kids, which for the purposes of this forum I will be keeping anonymous. So, my oldest daughter "Comfort" is 3 years old. She is super chatty and says the craziest things like 3 year olds are known to do. One thing that she started, and that the rest of the family has adopted, is that stores and restaurants are now known by what she eats or buys there not by their names. We have 'cheeseburger house', 'pizza house', 'restaurant house' - because it looks like a restaurant apparently - etc.  Our youngest daughter "Joy" is 2 years old and doesn't talk much so we are happy to hear anything she says. In fact, we often create adventures in order to provide the opportunity for her to practice her words. 

Fish and aquariums have been a favorite of our kids for a long time. Recently a Bass Pro Shop opened north of town and it is monstrous! Embarrassingly so. We've gone to visit the 'fish store' probably once a month because there's an aquarium with fish that look like Dory and Nemo and another with a couple of catfish that dwarf our toddlers. There's also a trout stream in the middle that they can lean down toward - carefully - and there's the scary anticipation of walking by the bear on our way through the cave. 

But all through the store there are turkeys, deer, moose, fish and other game that a kid from the 'burbs like me has difficulty recognizing outside of a National Geographic documentary. This, however, is an opportunity for our kids to practice their language skills during an adventure that doesn't cost us anything - much as I'm sure the store would like for us to buy something each time we visit.

Adventures with your kids don't have to cost you anything. It can be right in your own neighborhood, or next door to where you shop, or across town. Mostly, I think these adventures show that there is a Cool Idea - a capital "A" adventure - in many things that we already do. The key is to tap into it, to do it intentionally, or to refine it so that the really good stuff is polished to a nice glossy shine. That's the really Cool Idea!