We shared a fun morning of play among the tulips at Crescent Bend with our play-friends. The gardens are so much fun to enjoy with fountains and pretty flowers. Julia was pretty shy about leaving her mother’s arms, so we enjoyed a lot of watching Emily and the others play. The longer we were there the more Julia was willing to go on her own, but never far from her Mommy.

Emily enjoyed all of her freedom. There were scrapped legs that required a little attention and a photograph to heal. Also there were fountains to stick hands into. At one point Elena and Emily were carrying small amounts of water in their hands to water the tulips. Everyone chased bubbles, walked on flower bed edges pretending they are balance beams, smelled tulips, played under an umbrella, and had a lot of fun. Aiden did get his foot into the fountain at one point soaking his shoe and sock.

We ate a picnic lunch before we left the grounds and as usual the other kid’s food looked more interesting than what their own mama brought. This is such a funny, but consistent practice between the kids. After lunch the bigger kids ran, played with small rocks, rolled down a hill in the grass, and jumped off of one big rock. They were sad to go home and the weather and temperature had just been perfect. I hope we can have more days like that!

Sunny days are great for playdates. We had a picnic lunch and play time at a park with our friends. The kids are doing such sweet things with each other. Emily is making friends at the park with kids and doing things together on the equipment, they have cute moments of holding hands, Julia is wanting to follow Emily around, they all want to give each other a push on the swing, and they are happy together. This makes for some happy mommies.

I had to include a photo of the little one to join us soon. In just about a month, baby Loveday will join the fun playdates. It will be no time until a new one is toddling around the play equipment!

Just some more photos of our fun playdate!

Fall leaves make good piles – good piles make for good fun! We had a morning playdate with the leaves this morning. There was a lot of jumping, wading, dumping, and pushing. The kids enjoyed picking up leaves and dumping them on each other. Kids sure are fun to watch! Thanks Aiden, Elena, and Maeve for coming to play today.

We spent one warm summer morning at the Splat Pad with a friend and her kids. I ended up with a lot of action photos of Emily because she was very busy and not interested in looking at the camera. And not to many of Julia because she was attachedto me for much of the play time.

This park has a playground right next to the water area so that the kids can move freely between the two areas safely. Emily chose to play in the playground and not get wet for quite a while. And even after she got wet, she really enjoyed the playground area best this day. She was little ‘Miss Outgoing’ and hung out with some big girls who were great to include Emily in their play. Emily warmed up to the slide slowly as usual, but while holding Mommy’s hand she decided that it was OK. Her wet suit made her very fast down the slide.

Julia hung out with me most of the time. We tried the bumbo next to some squirting water so that she could explore it on her own. Almost immediately, a little boy came to play and inadvertently splashed Julia with water, which she didn’t like. I got her settled and Emily came to check on her. She was very sweet to talk to her and even pet her on the head. The funny thing was that Emily decided that she wanted to put her foot in the water and used Julia’s head to steady herself. The pulling of Julia’s hair was the last straw of Julia’s patience with sitting by the water and she wanted nothing less than to be held. I don’t really blame her, I wouldn’t like my hair being pulled and water splashed in my face either.

This was by far my favorite park and splat pad we have visited for a playdate. The location was good for meeting for a playdate, the size of the park was great for small kids, and the water made it easy to cool off and a lot of fun!

We spent a beautiful hour out picking strawberries with some friends and their girls. It is nice to be out with people that Emily is familiar with; so that, she is so much more bold. She also wants to be like the other girls so she generally acts better and tries new things to be like them too. I think she had a lot of fun, she didn’t have any inhibitions about picking the red strawberries straight from the plants on the ground. No lesson on how to pick was necessary. I might need to check over the ones we picked to see if we have any overly ripe ones.

Emily picked strawberries, visited with the different mamas, hung out with the girls, fell down and required comfort, played in the dirt, found mud, played with Julia, snuck snacks from Elena’s lunch, and sampled Mommy’s strawberry fried pie. I call that a successful outing! It is hard to take photos, herd kids, pick strawberries, and get great photos. So, I have no photos of Julia because she hung out in our front pack and no great individual photos of Emily. But we had fun and enough photos to help us remember it by.