There was a palpable malaise in the air, courtesy of the heat and staying up to near-dawn. When late afternoon rolled around, I knew we needed to do something. ‘We can go for a walk, or we can go for a picnic,’ I suggested to my crew.

Naturally, my walk-averse crew picked the picnic.

But I certainly didn’t have any energy to prepare food for such an outing, so we stopped at Clive Burger for burgers and fries and drove to nearby Central Memorial Park. It had been on my list of places to visit – a downtown oasis containing a library, Boxwood Cafe and biggest-draw-of-all: fountains.

The boys saw the fountains while we were still eating dinner. ‘Can we go look at the fountains,’ they asked. And of course we knew ‘looking’ was going to turn into ‘playing’ which was going to turn into……being completely wet.

So we said yes.

And an hour and a half later, we climbed back into the van; three of the family members riding sans their very wet shirts or pants; Percy’s waterlogged diaper puffed up to thrice its normal size.

We had seen something new. We had eaten dinner. And we’d managed to survive until bedtime.