28 Days of Nor Cal Adventures: Day 5

DAY 5 (August 24th): Highland Park

This is the park from my childhood.  My grandmother lived near this neighborhood, so more often than not we found ourselves playing at this park as little kids.  The wooden structure in the above picture was brand new two decades ago and used to be the high light of the park.  Unfortunately, nostalgia is about all that recommends this park...for parents at least.

I find one thing very humorous, though.  Kids and parents have a whole different rating system for parks.  Kids are happy with any park that has slides, swings, or climbing sets.  It does not matter how clean or new they are.  This park had all of these things and was definitely NOT clean or new.  The boys had a blast.

The boys are getting a lot better at crossing the monkey bars.  Pretty soon they won't need Daddy's help.

The climbing spiral is always a favorite spot for the boys, no matter what park we go to.  If the park has a spiral the boys will spend at least five minutes climbing up and down it.

Gordy went down the Fireman's Pole for the first time all by himself.  I missed the first one because it happened so unexpectedly, but he was more than happy to do it many more times for the camera.

AJ had lots of fun.  Playing tag and hanging off of equipment that was finally tall enough for him to do so.

These three toys are actually about as old as, if not older than, I am.  I have seen pictures of myself playing on these exact toys when I was about Gordy's age.

28 Days of Nor Cal Adventures: Day 3

DAY 3 (August 22nd)- Ross Park (M & 11th Streets)

On the suggestion of a friend, for Day 3 we went to Ross Park.  I learned later that my mother had babysat in this area as a teen and had taken her charges to Ross Park regularly, so this added a bit of nostalgia to our trip.  Of course there is little else that is nostalgic about Ross Park now.  Nearly everything at the park is new and improved!

Our first stop was the Monkey Bars.  AJ started it off, but got gun shy, so Gordy pushed his way to the front and barreled right on through with Daddy's help.  After that AJ was willing to make one more attempt, this time with Daddy helping a little bit (or giving him a wedgie!).

This was seriously the tallest slide I have seen in a while.  The day ended when Gordy fell over backwards from the bottom trying to get off.

Rock climbing!  This was a cool feature.

This is a balance board.  The key is to try to balance with no hands.  AJ attempted it, but decided he preferred the stability of using his hands.

I have said in the past that Gordy has a very odd "fear factor".  He is afraid of monsters, ghosts, spiders, bugs, carousels and loud noises.  Yet he has no problem climbing tall structures and hanging precariously by his hands until he can drop safely.  My odd little Dare Devil.

This is one of the only features in the park that is not new.  It is an old spring centered teeter totter.  It would be pretty difficult to launch anyone from this considering Todd needed to help the boys just to get it to go up and down.

Bottom line, we had a great time at this little park!

28 Days of Nor Cal Adventures: Day 2

DAY 2: Freshwater Park (August 21st)

This being a pretty busy week, I decided that the best options for getting us out of the house this week would be to simply go to a different park every day.  I really wanted to go to as many parks that we hadn't been to as possible.  I recalled a friend of mine mentioning going to Freshwater Park last week, so I picked this park for our first stop.

Gordy, of course, went right for the playset and slide.  This kid would live in a tree house with slides and swings if that were an option.  He had blast running around a new playset.

Next, both of the boys ran for the sandbox.  I don't think either of them had ever seen an actual sandbox before, so this was a WAY new experience for them.  AJ immediately wanted to make a sand castle, so that was pretty much it for him, until we went for the water.

We all noticed that one of the swings had been broken from the top.  Instead of a typical reaction of a "normal person" (which would be something like "ah, that sucks"), Todd thought "Hey, I can climb up there and fix that".  Well, it didn't work.  But his ability to shimmy up the pole inspired him to start doing pull-ups.

Gordy wanted to do pull-up too!

Finally we made it to the water.  The last time I had been to Freshwater Park was 8 years ago, and the swimming hole had still been under construction.  Never had I imagined that the swimming hole would be this nice.  It was awesome.  I felt bad for not bringing the boys' swim trunks (for like 30 seconds, until I remembered it was cold and over cast).  They still had fun and we did let them wade in the water for a little bit.  I promised them that the first Sunny day next week I will bring them back for a swim.