Autumn Picnic

So at the weekend we went for a picnic by the lake.  A totally impromptu decision as most of this families are.  The weather was beautiful and I didn't need to fuss about making sandwiches and taking mosquito repellent. We just grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the local supermarket and headed off for our walk. For once the kids didn't moan, while my boys are quite an active pair, to randomly walk somewhere, with no specific destination or reason, just seems utterly pointless to them. But with bellies full and giggles at ducks they were happy to just cruise along the path with us.  The photographers where quite out in force and for this I was very grateful as I could just pop over and see what they were looking at and grab a few shots for myself.  We stop by one lady who was taking a picture of a large group of thistles, not an interesting subject you may think, until she pointed out the enormous blue dragonfly perched quite contentedly on this spiky plant not bothered at all that we were all excited to see it up close.  Daddy could see "ole itching fingers" wanting to grab, shake or distract the bug so gave Humf a good sharp warning as the other photographer and I snapped away, while doing this Ninja decided to stick his oar in and give the thistle a good rustle.  We all gasped as the dragonfly flew away, and the sheer disappointment on all our faces must have hit him like a stone.  While I desperately try to apologise to the other photographer for my child's insensitive behaviour, Daddy took Ninja away and tried to explain to him why we were all so disappointed by what he'd done. Bless him when he finally recognised what he'd done, he pretty much fell apart, (that boy is far to much like me) and no amount of soothing words and it doesn't matters left him feeling any better.  The whole think before you act thing, we all have to learn at some point had got him good and proper.  We managed after a good 10 minutes of break your heart stuff like, why am I so stupid, why did I have to do it, why do I never listen. He finally calmed down and we carried on our walk round the lake to the play area. By this time whinge pants had given up being the good one (for a change) and had reverted back to normal state of, the one you have to watch like a hawk and was good and ready to cause some mischief.  Luckily the park wasn't too busy and he was pretty much left to himself to play on whatever he wanted without getting up anyone elses nose.  Why do they never want to leave, it always gets me how, it doesn't matter how long you stay in that play area, they always want 5 more minutes, sometimes I look at them and wonder what it feels like to be them, looking at all the things around me with my head whirling with imaginative adventures, instead of sitting there watching them panicking that they are going to fall and hurt themselves. In the end they finally got tired enough that they didn't complain to much when we said it was time to leave and as we walked back to the car we did a bug hunt and were very successful in our finds.