A Week of Parks

We have had such gorgeous weather the past ten days or so!  Last week, we went to a different park every day of the week and enjoyed hours outside every day.  On Sunday, we took the kids to Leeds Park.  It is really pretty far from our house, but not too far from church, so it's a great Sunday afternoon option.  Plus, the kids don't get to go there much and therefore they love it.  It has a huge play set that makes me a little dizzy when I look all the way up it, but doesn't daunt the boys at all :)  On Monday, we met a friend and her two little ones at a little neighborhood park near our house, and then, after Ethan's nap, I took the boys to Hoover Sports Park Central, another nearby park that Marcus recently discovered.

On Tuesday, we spent almost three hours in the afternoon at our very favorite park, which the boys have dubbed "The Castle Park."  It has a huge maze of wooden levels with "castle" look-out points that the boys love exploring and running through.  When they were younger, it made me nervous to go there, because I can rarely see both of them at once, but now that they are older, it is fun for all of us.  Caleb recently learned to do the monkey bars at this park, because they are low to the ground and he didn't mind dropping whenever his arms got tired.  While we were there this afternoon, Caleb and Ethan made friends with a sibling group of three, and the five of them played hide-and-seek-freeze-tag for a long time.

On Wednesday, we went to Homewood Park (the kids call it the "Caterpillar Park") and rode bikes.  This was quite a workout for me because I had to keep up with Ethan, who is not quite old enough to be trusted to stay on the sidewalk throughout the park, nor to steer clear of younger/smaller children.  I was pretty worn out after an hour and a half, and the park was starting to get crowded, so we loaded back into the car and went over to Aldridge Gardens to meet Aunt Wendi and Joel for a quick hike around the gardens.  Caleb loves parks, but Ethan prefers hiking and the zoo, so this was his favorite part of the week so far.  On Thursday, we spent the morning at Veteran's Park.  I guess the rest of the Mommies were pretty parked-out by then, because it wasn't too busy.  Caleb and Ethan did manage to find two little girls (sisters) to play monsters with, though (monsters = the boys act like monsters and chase the girls and the girls squeal and run away).

By Friday, I was almost ready to stay home and forgo one day of beautiful weather, but a friend called and invited us to a play date at the castle park, so we got ready and headed over there.  I probably should have followed my instinct, since this turned out to be the only day all week that the boys weren't happy and well-behaved outside.  Ethan was whiny and Caleb was mischievous, so we called it a morning a little early and headed home for Ethan's nap.

Saturday was the best day of all, because Marcus got to go with us to Oak Mountain State Park, where we hiked for hours with Aunt Wendi and Joel.  We stopped by the petting zoo first, and were amazed to see five new pairs of goat kids in the barn (I say pairs because there were two born to each mother...maybe goats always have two at a time, I don't know :)  All five pairs had been born within the past week, and one had been born just two hours before we arrived.  They were still wet and very, very new.  Since almost all the goats were in the barn with their babies, there were only a strutting peacock, a very sweet Shetland pony, and a lot of very shy sheep in the barnyard, so we didn't get to do much petting.  Next, we drove over to one of the lower trail heads and set off on our hike.  We always hike pretty slowly with plenty of stops to allow the kids to climb up a slope, walk over a log bridge, or collect cool things they see along the path.  At one point, we stopped near a stream so the boys could throw stuff in the water (a favorite amusement).  The weather was so nice that we even let them strip down to their undies and play in the stream for about 30 minutes.  They, of course, got soaking wet, but they had a blast, and, when they were done, we just took off their undies and put their shorts, T-shirts and shoes back on.  When we finally got back to the cars, we looked at the trail map and realized that the boys had made it for a 2.5 mile hike! (and Marcus only had to carry Ethan for about ten minutes)  It was a beautiful day outside, and I am so glad Marcus got to take a break from his dedicated studying to enjoy it with us.

The great weather is supposed to be continuing this week, so the plan is to visit the zoo and another favorite park that didn't make it into the line-up last week, though we are taking Monday off for grocery shopping and getting some housework done :)