Playground!!

During past summers it has been a goal of mine to visit with the grandchildren many different playgrounds at schools and parks around the city. The children have always enjoyed doing this, but now that the older three are doing more summer camps it has been hard to schedule in a time when they all can go--and then, since the older ones are older (!!!) they are less excited about visiting playgrounds. *sigh*  This was our first playground adventure of the summer with all five onboard.

Wednesday morning I recalled that our church ward had a summer playground schedule and it was Huffman Elementary that day. We've never been to Huffman, so I invited the children to go and at first three of them turned me down, but by the time we left the house for the second time (we had to come back and unload cargo in the back of the truck that I had forgotten about), all five children had opted in.

We had the playground to ourselves--no one from the ward showed up and no one else was using the playground until the last ten minutes. It's a nice playground surrounded by woods and a fence to keep the bears out--not that bears can't climb fences, so maybe the fence is to keep the kids in?

There are four monkeys in this photo--one on top, three on the bars.

Check out the outhouse on the school's roof! The kids thought that was rather strange…and I have to agree. I don't know that I've ever seen an outhouse on a roof before. (The roof is being repaired, so the outhouse was for the construction workers, not the school children. Evan had to use a tree when he needed to go.)

The children all had a great time!

Lincoln was the first of the children to get all the way across this piece of equipment. The older three have mastered the technique in the past, but it took them a while to figure it out this time.

After the playground we stopped at Fred Meyer's to purchase salt water taffy. Earlier in the week Viva requested that I take her to Fred's so she could purchase her own supply. (The store had a seasonal display with salt water taffy.) Bentley chose Reese's cups while the other four selected their favorite taffies. The bag with all orange and white is Evan's. They went overboard, but it was their money so I didn't stop them.

Lincoln and Evan have missed out on summer fun because I let the older children rule the schedule. I still have a month (or even two) to hit some playgrounds with Lincoln and Evan. I will do better!