As you all know, the Pizza and Root Beer myth has been busted, but that has not stopped us from trying to get this labor kick started. Walking has usually been effective for bringing on contractions, so while I was at church with the young adult ministry on Thursday night, Karissa decided to go for a walk at a local park with the three kids and Nana (her mom).

Nana had come over to help out while I was at church and they had gone to Burgermaster to grab some grub and took it to the park. After finishing their food, everyone headed out to the boardwalk for a nice leisurely stroll through the wetlands. Little did they know what they were about to get themselves into. They walked much too far before deciding that they should really turn back. At that point, Karissa was already worn out, but so was Kyler. Upon realizing that he was tired, what else was a 1 year old to do but start to cry. Kyler wanted his mommy to pick him up, but the poor little guy had no idea why she couldn’t carry him all the way back to the car so he began to cry his little heart out while being scooped up by Nana.

This is not the first time this scenario has played out before. It is quite sad, but not worthy of a blogging, however, what happened next is what made the evening. Caleb and Rylee were having a great time running up and down this boardwalk that sits about 4inches above the muck/mire/bog/pond or whatever you call the “water” of the wetlands. All of a sudden Karissa and Nana see Caleb trip and fall off the boardwalk and plunge his head right into the wetlands. As you can imagine, this did not go over too well with Caleb. With his hair full of muck and stinky water Karissa did her best to clean him up after assessing that there were no injuries. When she noticed that his sweats were pretty well soaked with the stench, she figured he would be better off walking the rest of the way in his undies. The only problem with that was apparently after the kids had been playing in the sprinkler, Caleb had decided to go “commando” to the park instead of putting a pair of underroos on. After working extra hard to get down to Caleb’s level to get his pants off she realized real quick that he was going to have to keep those stinky sweats on.

To top it off, only a few minutes later, Rylee found herself flat on her back square in the middle of a large puddle (several parts of the floating boardwalk were submerged underwater) that had caused her to lose her footing and fall right on her tush. So, for the remainder of the walk back to the car, Nana is holding a crying Kyler, Caleb and Rylee have stinky wet pants and hair, and Karissa – one day before her due date, is doing her best just to keep her body moving.

It was a walk to remember, and just about as effective as Pizza and Root Beer for bringing on labor.

– Chris