30 Things 2014: Thing #2—Impromptu Pizza Party at the Park

Everything tastes better when you eat it outside. Even if you're a nine-month-old and you have to make do with a kale-spinach-apple teething puff bar.

Sometimes you have everything in the fridge to make (1) minestrone and (2) tacos, but what you would rather do is go for a long walk with the family in perfectly lovely spring weather. Sometimes this perfect walk doesn't get to happen until 5:00 p.m. Sometimes you have to choose between forgoing a walk to make dinner or forgoing dinner to take a walk.

A frugal family would stay home and start boiling those vegetables. In fact, an awesome family might do that.

But there is more than one way to be awesome. We decided halfway to the park to turn around, grab some food for Charlie, and then walk past the park to the local pizza place, Capital Pizza, home of the weirdest pizza crust and mostly unpredictable levels of cheese. It also happens to be delicious.

I would just like to point out two things: (1) David's hair is magnificent; (2) you can't tell, but Hollie's shorts are covered in pink flamingos. Grandma Hollie finds all the raddest clothes.

We took the opportunity to bask in the sunlight at the local elementary school and let Holls slide on slides, wandering over for bites of pizza at her leisure.

Okay, so Thing #2 wasn't anything epic. But you know, it was awesome for us. There are few things we feel like we are managing well in our life right now, because so much is happening all at once (good things, mostly, so we really don't want to complain). We try to stay home and cook our own meals, for the sake of health and the sake of money. But there are some springtime late afternoons that you don't get to relive later, and you feel like you might waste them hunched over a stove in a dimly lit kitchen.

So we opted for an impromptu pizza party at the park.

This may be hard to see, but there was this moment when David made me laugh so hard on the walk home that I threw my head forward and all my pizza toppings came off on my face. I have a pizza beard that looks like shadows from my hair, but I promise it is cheese and tomato sauce. Also, somehow we left the house with two children younger than age 3 and brought ZERO wet wipes. Not even a napkin. And we were still several blocks from home! So David did what any tender husband would do—he pulled our brand new smart phone (the first we've ever owned) out of my own pants pocket to document my disgrace. (Also, the pink shirt was a Valentines' Day gift from Davey. He also got me knee-high striped tube socks. It's frightening how well he knows me.)

Awesome Thing #2: Dance, laugh, and run around with pizza slices in our hands—ACCOMPLISHED