who needs to go to the park

No one around here. Because the park is here.

Seriously.

There are many amazing perks to bumming off my parents and being the resident widow living in my penthouse apartment. Though I'd much rather the widow part be left out. It just usually conjures up extra sympathy from our generous benefactors. Actually, let's just leave the widow part out because there will be plenty of time when we are just a regular old family bumming off my parents and living in our luxury penthouse apartment....

Anyway, I digress, here are some examples of the amazing things that my children get to do without having to actually go anywhere.

Swim. We live above a swimming pool.

Spy on everybody and give people a shower while making "soup". We have an amazing deck that happens to be rather above everything else. Making soup is a favorite past time involving lots of water and buckets and bowls and stirring utensils. Nobody has actually gotten a shower while on a walk underneath us, but there's a pretty good chance it might happen someday to the unwary.

Ride bikes, scooters, and walkers. There is a very large, very nice basketball/sports pad. And our cousins have a very impressive array of bikes, trikes and scooters. Sidon and Max join in with walkers. Auntie Amy also ordered a collection of balls, cones, hoops, ropes, streamers and other sorts of outdoor play items along with a cart to store in them.

disclaimer: I know these pictures don't show this, but really our children always wear helmets. They're not allowed to ride without them. We also have knee pads if they're not wearing pants. This was just very soon after the pad was completed and we were lax for some reason that evening. I don't think they were on it for very long.




Sidon and Max having a loving cousin moment and playing ball.

p.s. Look at those blue eyes and that hair. Sometimes I think we should have named him Hans and that he should be wearing lederhosen. So much for dominant genes in this family.



















Garden. OK, so the kids don't really do any real gardening. They just pull up a few carrots, squeeze the peaches a little too hard, and follow Auntie Amy around while she does the real work. The garden is beautiful. Though Amy's been gardening for years, this year the garden got a major face lift. And just recently citrus, grapes and blueberries were added to the hillside which will be super exciting in the years to come. The children got to help pick peaches and pluots not long ago, and then eat them. I liked Rivers' basket of fruit. It was well tasted.





Max has a really cool car. He's just a really cool guy. And he's pretty cute, too. Sidon got some peach as well. Auntie Amy fed him pieces and they both got rather sticky.

















Play in the rocks. What kid doesn't like to play in pea gravel and get disgustingly dirty? The pea gravel pits are another new addition resulting from all of the major landscaping work going on this summer. While we were awaiting the play structures that belong in the rock pits, we had a lot of fun just playing in the rocks themselves. I'm pretty sure that at least a couple of the rocks went through Sidon's digestive system, but a binky seems to prevent that from happening too much.

Who needs the actual super cool airplane teeter totter? The box is cool enough.

Auntie Amy put the airplane together by herself. She is amazing. So is the airplane. Sam has named it the Sea Duck. They recently got the first season of Tale Spin on dvd. There's also a lot Rescue Ranger playing, because they got that dvd, too.



And don't forget about eating candy and other such delicacies. Auntie Amy often has something yummy for the kids. She's cool like that.

















Swing. The swingset is so totally fun. The girls are so excited about it. Can you tell? Thank you to Grandpa and those who helped him put it up.