Park Week- Day 1

It all started when Nichole was still in school, and the boys and I would take time while she was there to go to different parks to let Jr. play on the playgrounds. I thought, wouldn't it be fun to spend a week during the Summer going to a different park each day to let the kids run around? I even went so far as to think maybe we could even go to two parks each day. We knew of enough parks in nearby cities. As the Summer progressed and we had opportunities to go driving around as a family, we realized that just in Pleasant Grove there are quite a few parks.
I finally researched enough using local city websites to realize there are so many parks nearby. So much for the idea of going to one or two parks a day. We decided it would be more fun to visit as many parks as we could each day during Park Week. Spend so much time at one park before moving on to another park then another then another, playing on playgrounds, eating lunch, running around.
It's nice to get familiar with more parks so we have some variety and aren't going to the "kite flying park" every time we go out. I made a list of things to find out about each park while we're there, such as if it has restrooms, a paved walking path to push Jr. Jr. around in the stroller, a playground for the older kids, and of course enough open space to run around and fly kites. There are a lot more things on the list, but you don't need to know about all of them, unless you want to. :)

With the busy season happening for Balloon Guy Entertainment, we don't have time to devote whole days to getting to know as many parks as we want in a week, so we'll probably expand Park Week to two weeks, fitting it in our schedules and taking off Sunday to rest.

Anyway, now that I've given that long introduction, let me tell you about Park Week- Day 1.
We kind of got a late start. Since we were combining it with Family Home Midday, Nichole decided that she wanted our FHM activity to be Jr.'s special parade. I promised her back in June that we would do a parade for Jr. since he missed being in the Strawberry Days Children's Parade when he fell asleep before it started.

So, we got a late start. I'll be honest. We often get a late start. It seems that the kids take longer to get ready on days when we're going to do something they want. This time, they were busy picking out costumes to wear in Jr.'s parade.

So we finally got going. I had figured out a route that would get us to a few parks in Pleasant Grove and all the Lindon parks, but we only got to five of the nine parks planned for Day 1 before getting rained out. We sure had fun, though. Here's where we went:

Veteran's Memorial Park (Pleasant Grove).

Playground, pavilion, lots of trees to provide shade, but no restrooms. It's right next to the public pool, so there are probably restrooms in there (and it's a short drive to our home, so for us it's no big deal). And the playground did have one of those pipe things where you can talk to each other across the playground. Nichole and Jr. weren't quite tall enough to reach the speaking part, so they would climb up to talk into it. I took my cues from them and Nichole also tried jumping up to the pipe to say very short phrases.

(click on the pictures to see them larger)

Battle Creek Park (Pleasant Grove).

Playground, pavilion, and restrooms. The walking path around the park was old and not so smooth.

Anderson Park Wilderness Area (Pleasant Grove).

This one didn't have a playground but it had a lot of other things. We saw several kinds of birds, fruit trees, a sand pit to play in, lots of shade, but also an open field. Jeremy said this must be the park for Eagle projects as we saw a few signs of them. One was a flag pole, another was a paved path leading to an ampitheater. There were several other things that we guessed could be Eagle projects. There were bridges across the irrigation canal/stream running through the park as well as benches throughout.

We had our Family Home Midday lesson and treat (picnic lunch) there before moving on. Jr. Jr. had been asleep until halfway through this park, so we let him join us for lunch. He did really well when we just handed him a cracker. Ate most of it.

Hill Park (Pleasant Grove).

Jr.'s Parade.

Hill Park was very open with a great walking path for our parade and a beautiful view of the lake. The playground was nice except one of the slides must have been broken as it was boarded up at the top and bottom with signs saying Keep Off. Daddy helped Jr. Jr. join in the fun at the playground, though.

We could see the storm across Utah Lake and watched as it gradually got cloudier and cloudier in our area.

It was starting to rain a little as we got to the car, but had let up when we reached the next park.

Hollow Park (Lindon).

We didn't explore this one nearly enough since the rain started really coming down a few minutes after we got there. It was an enclosed area, set far enough back from the street, between quite a few homes of people who had farm animals, so we were surrounded by horses, geese, sheep, and who knows what else. The playground was nice, the pavilions were nice, it had a beautiful paved walking path that ran around the edge of the whole park.
We will definitely be heading back there to explore more when it's not raining.
With the weather as it was, we couldn't go to any more parks, so we headed to the Orem Library instead. That was a good indoor activity picking out books and things before heading home and once again, Jr. was asleep before we got home.

It was a good family day.