I finished doing my taxes a little while ago, and we're getting a large enough return that I broke down and consented to order an Amish-made dining room table that Beth has always wanted. Actually it's quite a bit cheaper than I would have thought. Anyway, we went to one of the Amish furniture places up near Nappanee and place the order yesterday. Beth wanted to get some quilting done today, so just after Missy went down for a nap I took Alex out for a while. There was an open house at two new condos downtown...the loft kind, built in a gutted old building...and I'd always wondered what the places in the old buildings downtown looked like so we went to see. Alex liked riding the alligator (elevator) up to the third story, and the condos themselves had a lot of stairs and landings and such, including spiral staircases to the roof where they both had a patio of sorts. We were the last ones to see the place before they closed up for the day. After that I took him to one of the parks in town. Unfortunately there was a group of bigger kids (probably 10-12 yrs old) throwing rocks at each other on the playsets. I kept and eye on them until Alex wanted to play there, and then I yelled at them to knock it off when he wanted to go play there. After that they slunk around, shouting obscenities and acting cooler than me, kind of tossing stones in our direction and shadowing us. Alex only wanted to play there for a while before he was off exploring the beach and walkways around the lake, and they followed us as we went. One of them was on roller blades. I just went on with our business until Alex started getting ornery and it was time to go home, then took the long way around back to the van when the delinquents weren't paying much attention. The one with the skates was watching and started towards us as I got into the van; I'm certain he was going to throw stones at the van as we left but traffic was clear and he never got close enough. Beth told me that's why she doesn't take the kids to that park very much.