I’m forever amazed at how, when we make plans with kids, what I envisage is never what actually happens.

I wrote about this once here regarding a trip downtown on Canada Day.

It happened again tonight.

My husband plays in a recreational football league every Monday night.

He loves it.  He exercises. They sometimes go for beer afterwards.  It’s his night out. It’s all kinds of good.

He’s been asking for a while that I take the girls to watch a game and we decided tonight was the night.

The park was close; the game started at 6:00; it was perfect.

I got home from work early. He was feeding them an early dinner. I zipped around packing snacks and drinks and pompoms so we could cheer “Go Daddy!” from the sidelines.

I pictured it going sort of like this:

But my husband forgot to include one very important detail.

The park he was playing at had a splash pad.

Our kids?

Totally noticed.

We had to walk right by it to get to the football field.

It hadn’t occurred to me to do my research. I figured BIG WATER PLAYGROUND might be something my husband would mention about the park he was playing by and how it might contribute to, say, preschoolers not being TOTALLY focussed on the game.

Nope. He’d never even noticed it before.

I really tried.

We set up by the field. We talked to the players during warm up. I let them (both) sit on my lap. At the same time.

Interest in football lasted about 7 minutes.

We tried the play structures at the park first. Because, well, dry.

Fully intended to return and watch the game.

They promised and everything.

But, seriously, mom, did you notice the splash pad?

We can turn it on ourselves! How awesome is that?

And we’ll totally just clean the sand off our feet.

We’ll stay dry.

Yeah.

Didn’t matter that the splash pad apparently isn’t even officially working according to the City of Ottawa site.

It was still all kinds of awesome.

Ten minutes and they were both drenched.

Mom do you have a change of clothes?

Um, no.

My two-year-old wandered around happily in a fresh dry diaper. It’s all kinds of cute that I’m not posting to the Internet.  My eldest got to remove her tights. And nothing more.

And she enjoyed experimenting with the effects of water on the pompom.

What were we here for again?

Right – cheering on daddy!

We can totally see him from the splash pad.

Close enough?

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Do you have a story about best laid plans with kids?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

It’s Monday so I’m linking up as usual with Meredith over at her Manic Monday’s blog hop at Perfection Pending.  Do check it out.

And I thought I’d try This Momma’s Meandering Monday’s this week as well. So give them a gander too.