Friday was special. My phone rang at 2:40pm.

“Just letting you know we’re off the clock at three.”

“Great.”

“Kiss my babies for me and have a great weekend.”

I dutifully kissed the girls and then fed and changed them.

“Wanna go to the park girls?”

“Slides! We goin’ to da slides.”

“Sai. Ga-sai. Ya ya ya!”

“We comin’ slides. We missed you, I love you. I’ll be dere in a minute slides. We comin’!”

I ushered the girls to the garage, Briar hopping and continuing to alert the slides to our impending arrival and Avery walking and craning her neck to keep Briar in her field of vision. They chattered and kicked as I loaded them into our bright red double stroller. Lacing my tennis shoes I was delirious with anticipation, a midafternoon, weekday, walk to the park, it seemed so decadent.

And it was. We swang and slid, ran and tumbled, steered and skipped, but mostly, we played in the dirt.

I’ll refrain from captioning each photo and simply say that the girls played together and alone beautifully.