Soccer tryouts are over and summer vacation has officially begun.

It was my turn to take Doyle and his friends to a water park this week. They all have annual passes, from either Santa or birthdays.

My Mom friends and I have decided that we’re not going to just drop the kids off this year, that one of us should be on the premises in case of emergency. Plus, since we can’t bring food and drink into the park, we can corral the boys and go to the parking lot and eat lunch from a cooler in the car.

Let me borrow an overused technique to describe our day:

Annual pass for Mom, including tax . . . . . . . . $64
Sunscreen from gift shop (I forgot ours). . . . . $12
Daily parking pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10
Bottled water (4, we shared) . . . . . . . . . . . . $11
Locker rental (for cellphones so Mom could swim) . $13
Drive-thru shakes on the way home . . . . . . . . $19

Watching the silliness of the parking lot food fight with the grapes I so carefully washed for Doyle’s lunch . . . Priceless

They had such a fun, silly time with the food fight, that I wondered if we couldn’t have saved a hundred dollars and just cleaned out my refrigerator by throwing the contents around my back yard?

Do you have boy on the leading edge of childhood? Share your story in the comments section!