safety city

yesterday my friend taylor posted that it was the last day safety city was open to the public (its only open the the public from june-july from 9am-7pm.) i had no idea that it ever closed to the public! i texted cal and told him we should go when he got home from work. i had never been out there and i had always wanted to go.

its literally the cutest place of all time. it's a tiny version of knoxville with roads, stop lights, and little buildings (would be the cutest place for a shoot!) literally a mini applebees, alcoa steel, neyland stadium, the tennessee theatre, the sunsphere, etc. it was a community service project by our knoxville police department to help teach children vehicle, pedestrian, and bike safety! it's a perfect visual and hands on way to learn. i would've been all over this as a kid. you can bring bikes, motorized toy cars, scooters, and strollers..just no skateboards or motorized scooters.

so we scrambled to get there before it closed and we made it in time for a couple laps around. simms was in HEAVEN. lately he has been grilling me at stop lights..asking what color it is, what it means, telling me to slow down, speed up, etc. he's the worst backseat driver you could ever ask for but… i gotta love that he wants to learn! the other day i was sitting at a stop light and he yelled "GO!" i started to inch forward and realized it was still a red light. i freaked out and explained that i can't go when its red or i could crash the car. he saw a car wreck a few months ago and hasn't forgotten, so he took it very seriously. every time we see a cop when we're driving, he asks if he's giving the guys going too fast tickets or if they are bad and going to jail. so i knew that safety city would be a hit. 

naturally we rolled in with no helmet for simms and his bike…. at SAFETY city. my life is a joke, always just barely surviving over here. he actually doesn't even have a helmet, its not like i forgot it. i have GOT to get him one. he asked me a million times "why i not have something on my head?" because every kid on a bike there had on a helmet. the babies don't each have a bike, again mom of the year over here, so we just let them walk. vance was his typical baby self and refused. how the hell does he know he's the baby?!

simms followed ALL the rules in typical oldest child fashion. it ended up lightning and cutting our trip short. the cops came out and told the kids the were closing early because of lightning. simms headed toward the building to leave and started to ride his bike in the building. a cop quickly stopped him and told him you can't ride your bike in the building and simms' heart broke into twenty million pieces. he is TERRIFIED of cops and thought he was about to head to jail. haha. poor little guy! we can't wait to come back next summer and hopefully all the kids have a bike by then. 

xoxo- hannah