Have a Lazy Saturday: OR the most epic day of awesomeness ever.

Yesterday! Yesterday was quite the day. After a week of marathon homework sprees, brief encounters with friends, and days of being held hostage either at work or in my room for hours on end, I finally got a little snippet of time off just in time for Maggie to be here.

And what does one do when Maggie is here? You plan the most epic day you could ever possibly imagine and you have an absolute blast doing every little thing you planned. So, that is what we did. And it was awesome.

This lazy day we indulged in yesterday actually accomplished 3 of my Before You're 12's; Have a Lazy Saturday, Fly a Kite, and Go Geocaching. We did all three and SOOO much more. I shall now describe for you, in detail (and with pictures!) the lovely day that was my yesterday.
After one magnificent round of mimosas and homemade breakfast burritos, Mag and I ran a perfectly timed list of errands and met Jessie and Justin at Loose Park at 11:30am. We settled into a lovely nook of trees and had one very scrumptious (and aesthetically pleasing) picnic with smuggled sangria, fancy eats, and a lot of giggles.

After an hour of enjoying the coolness of the shade and about as much picnic snacks and sangria as the three of us could stand, we started our Geocaching adventures! For those of you who don't know what geocaching is, I am about to absolutely rock your world. Remember those awesome scavenger hunts you'd be sent on at birthday parties (or whenever your parents wanted you "out of [their] way for just 10 minutes, please!!") to find a random assortment of knick-knacks for no real purpose other than to find them??? Throw in a GPS, map coordinates, and a little mystery and voila! You have Geocaching. To participate, you sign up on the website, search for these hidden caches on a map, load the coordinates on to your phone (or GPS), and search for the hidden treasures others have left for you to find. Sometimes the cache you discover has little trinkets you can take with you (so long as you leave one behind!) and sometimes it is just a log you sign after finding it. I had done this once before with April in St. Louis, and had an absolute blast. So! I was very excited to share my love of the activity with Maggie, Jessie and Justin. Sadly, our first attempt was an utter failure. We searched and searched and searched and there was no cache in sight. No clue, picture, or hint provided by the creator helped us to locate it. I was, to be completely honest, a bit disheartened. Not willing to give up, however, we began a search for a second cache in the park. After a few navigational tricks, a stop at a shady bench, and a bathroom break, it wasn't long before...














...we found a lovely little bucket-of-fun hidden inside the trunk of an old tree in the park! There were some fun little diddy's in that bucket, but we decided to only share the wealth, not take any; I left an over-sized paperclip with a fortune cookie woven in, Maggie left a plastic cocktail garnish sword, Jessie left a little Homie, and Justin left a baby dinosaur. It was so much fun discovering the cache. You kind of feel like a pirate after buried treasure! Geocachers are quite the clever bunch. I look forward to finding other caches and possibly even making some of my own someday!

After we logged our find on the official geocache log and website, we moved on to Kite Flying!














Don't let Jessie's expression of joy fool you, the kites were kind of a disaster. If I had listened to the little girl in the park bathroom, I would have known that anyone over the age of 12 is probably ill-equipped to fly a kite anyway, but alas, we moved forward with the plans. About 15 minutes passed between the time we put our little $0.50 kites together and the time three of the four kites were lying in wake in the bushes, broken and bruised, no longer able to take flight.













BUT! For those glorious 15 minutes, the three of us ran around screaming, jumping, and giggling our way around the park, making fools of ourselves and having a damn good time doing it. Note to anyone planning on a kite-flying attempt? I highly suggest investing in a kite a bit more substantial than what you find next to the quarter machines at the dollar store. Either that, or bring lots of super glue to resurrect the kite carcasses when they snap.

After burring the our fallen flying friends, we concluded our day at Loose Park. Maggie and I parted ways from Justin and Jessie to go admire the wonder that is the World War I Museum.It was about this time that we discovered we were 1) badly sunburned and 2) suffering from heat exhaustion, but we powered on and saw the museum anyway. I got to take a lot of sweet pictures in the hour we spent there. I wish we had had more time to see all the awesome things displayed in the museum, but alas, we had to meet a group of friends at Thai Place for some killer Phad Thai; a wonderful evening of vegging on our living room floor, watching Big Bang Theory; and hours of sipping sangria and enjoying the rest of our lazy Saturday in our PJ's. It was glorious.

And now, still a little sunburned and surrounded by the resulting household mess of yesterday's activities, I can't help but think that yesterday may have been the best, most perfect day ever. I got to see most of my favorite people, partake in some fracking awesome festivities, see some amazing things, and escape from the stress of my hectic life for one day. I officially feel recharged, ready to meet the new week (and the rest of my finals!) with enthusiasm and gusto. I highly recommend everyone (not just the 12-year-olds) take the time to relax and have themselves a lazy Saturday every once in a while. Whether you fly kites or just sit around watching movies for a day, the resulting feeling of relief is well worth the momentary procrastination and delayed action on your life projects. Trust me, they can all can go on the back burner for just one day. The world will keep on a-spinnin' without them.

-Atticus

PS- I started a Shutterfly account where I will pictorially catalog the rest of my Before You're 12's (and other life photography projects) for you to see! Check it out sometime!