Frolicking with my grandkids gone bad…

Last week, I wrote about my little stay-cation adventure with my daughter Audrey and her 4 boys at a local Rhode Island gem, Green Animals Topiary Garden… one of the oldest topiary gardens in North America, a Victorian country estate that includes more than 80 sculptured trees and shrubs in animal and geometric forms, floral gardens, a rose arbor and fruit trees. The estate house (1870) is also available to tour.

This county estate is lovely, pristine and filled with the air of adventure and frolic.

And frolic we did.

The boys and I even found ourselves jumping off stone and slate steps under one of the gloriously shaded arbors…

And, well… almost 60- year old ME:

But you don’t see what happened next.

Heck, I don’t even remember what happened next, it happened so fast.

I was in the air, as shown above.

Then I was flipped over, on the ground, my head heading toward the steps, the skin on my left leg and left hand ripping into the sand on that bottom slab of slate with the kids’ screams, “GRANDMA!”echoing in my ears.

Then everything stopped.

Audrey had dropped her camera (thank goodness it was attached to her neck with a strap), and was running toward me, calling, “MOM?”

I do remember jumping up as quickly as I could, too embarrassed to just lay there like a slab of almost 60-years on that slab of old slate.

The boys were gathered around me, half in horror and half in glee when I proudly showed them my bloody wounds.  (Oh, the wounds must be bloody to actually count in such circumstances.)

Then to the outdoor ladies’ room (which was as lavish, clean and country-gorgeous as the rest of the estate, by the way).

A good scrub of the legs and hands with the nice smelling soaps.

And onward to more adventures.

(But I do think this little mishap amid our great adventure is one for the books.  Yes.)