High Ropes

Part of Keren's job is facilitating a high ropes course. She invited us to come up to her workplace today, to play on the high ropes for a couple of hours, just us and Beth and her brother and niece. (Beth and Keren and i all stayed on the ground. They don't like heights, and i felt better when i could keep an eye on the kids and make sure they were actually following safety protocols.)

Needless to say, the kids (and Juanito) were absolutely thrilled. All three kids climbed up with no trepidation at all. I'm pretty sure that Houston did every single element at least once, and did them all well. He even did the "flea hop," where you have to jump from one tiny platform to another to another, even though that was the only thing that actually scared him. Later, i asked him which element was his favorite, and he was all, "All of them!"

Katrina just seems fearless when she's up there, smiling and laughing and having a grand old time. At one point, she made her way across some looped ropes, with much effort and difficulty, and just as she finished, i noticed that her line was tangled around the second rope from the beginning, so she had to go all the way back and untangle it. And she did, giggling even as she was dangling midair, tangled in ropes and looking like a marionette.

Zane was incredibly brave. He tends to be our most cautious child, but he attacked the elements that he felt like he could do, and totally enjoyed doing them. Near the end of the time up there, he tried going across a difficult element - one wire, where the only thing to hold on to was a few dangling ropes - and when he was just under halfway across, he got too scared to continue on and ended up going back. After that, he stood quietly on a platform for a while, resting and getting his nerve back, but then he went back to climbing around again, and kept having fun.

And Juanito had fun totally showing off, dancing on the balance beams and walking across ropes without hanging onto anything. There was exactly one element that he tried and failed at. (I was kind of shocked when he huffed away from that one and didn't try it again.)

After everyone was exhausted and hungry, we went to Keren's apartment to eat, have birthday cake for Keren, and hang out for a little while.

Yay for fun adventures!