Cody drives through a small town that is about 10 miles from our house every day on his way to work. I noticed they had a nice looking park, but he wasn't interested... until he realized they
put in a splash pad!
It is not the most exciting splash pad. There are like 8 nozzles in the ground. It is totally on the honor system. The valve to turn it on and off is to the side. I would not have figured it out without Cody. You turn it on when you get there, and turn it off when you leave. On the positive side, we were there for over an hour and only one other family came with 1 kid for maybe 15 minutes. The rest of the time, we were alone.
Ben in green Alex in blue. They kept their binkys in for the first 15 or so minutes until they were comfortable. I gave up on pictures after I took these shots. It was too difficult to chase babies and worry about getting my phone/camera wet.
They were really excited
This is how high it sprayed. Since you got to turn it on yourself, you got to control the pressure/height of the water.
Playing
Then they started going back and forth from the equipment to the splash area. (and later to the gravel because they LOVE rocks)
This is about the time the other family came with the kid. He was older, maybe 3ish. He was very, very nice.
The boys threw a ball back and forth with him. Alex walked up to him, got right in his face, and started talking up a storm. The kid didn't quite know what to do, but he stood there and listened. Ben offered his binky to the boy. Luckily, the kid wasn't interested. He helped the boys climb up the equipment and they sat up near the slide together chatting. More specifically, my boys babbled and he talked back to them.
I was starting to chat with the mom when Ben took a spill. Cody went to pick him up and yelled, "We have a bleeder!" I thought he was kidding, so I didn't react quickly. It turns out, Ben tripped on the ground and hit his mouth on the stairs. He bit his lip so hard you could see the full outline of each front tooth on his bottom lip. Ben's shirt had a bunch of blood on it. Cody's shirt had a bunch of blood on it. I took him from Cody and got blood on the inside of my sports bra. All this time Alex sat calmly on the equipment with the stranger boy.
The bleeding stopped pretty quickly and he wasn't acting too upset, so we didn't leave immediately. He still wanted to play and Alex was doing well. We all looked pretty rough, but whatever. My boys are tough.
As we were leaving, some helpful small town gentleman stopped on the side of the road to make sure we knew how to turn the splash pad on. There are some benefits to small town life.
Here is a picture of the park from the street. Not the biggest in the world, but NO other kids! It is also built out of a material that doesn't get very hot. Lots of fun!
As we were pulling out, Cody and I both said, at the same time, how nice it would be to get ice cream. We took that as a sign to go see what was around. We drove down main street and found a neat little building/shack thing that sold what you would expect from a little building/shack. They had some ice cream, floats, weirdly named treats, also basic food like corn dogs and cheeseburgers. Delicious.
The line was really, really long. Especially considering we were in a small town. The boys waiting
They had a little seating area in the back, but it was in the sun. Instead we walked down main street a ways and sat on the ground to eat. The ice cream shack is where the people are gathered. Cody feeding the boys ice cream. They were not very happy to be stuck in a stroller that wasn't moving.
They didn't really love ice cream, so I gave them each a squeeze pouch.
Ben was looking a little red
I put in this picture to show his mouth boo boo. If you don't know, you can click on the picture to make it bigger.
Here is the same picture with the boo boo outlined in black so you know what to look for.
Alex was ready to go.
Look how similar they look! Multiple strangers commented about how much they looked alike today. They ARE identical silly strangers. I would say, "Yes, they are identical twins" then they would say something like, "They have the same hair color!" Yes... Yes they do.
This life size cutout of a woman was in a really random spot holding a sign for a candidate during the last elections. It looked like she was going to run in to the street at any moment. It creeped out my friend and me. I was super excited to see her holding a new sign in this other town. I think that is even creepier.
No comments:
Post a Comment