Splash Pad

A few months ago, this free park called Wardle Fields opened up not far from where we live. Brett and Rachel are in town with their kids, and they wanted to know if we'd like to join them, Matt, Grandpa, and some other relatives there. Stockton voted to stay home (Especially since he had to go to his bowling class later), but Preston and I went with Mom. It's a "splash pad", so we dressed in our swim suits and met up with our cousins at Grandpa's house. The air conditioning in our van is still broken, so we hitched a ride to the park in Grandpa's car instead. They had slides, jungle gyms, zip-lines, and all sorts of fun things!

I enjoyed climbing on the jungle gyms a lot, but it was hard to ride the slides! I ended up having to walk most of the way down. It was certainly an interesting place, because kids were free to go nuts with parents as the only supervisors. So, no one monitored the top of the slide or anything, so tons of kids would squeeze through the line and barrel down after each other. Lovely. Well, I never heard anyone crying, so I suppose they managed themselves okay!

I really enjoyed this jungle gym shaped like a cone. Not only could you climb it, but it spun, too! It was crazy how many kids loved running in circles spinning that thing, with all the kids hanging off it.

Marie and Preston at the top

I went back to the pavillion where we had set our things for awhile to find that some of our relatives had brought cake. Nice! I had a piece along with some goldfish and cookies. It's almost like we were at Lagoon. It's nice that Mom's side of the family is always willing to share when we meet at family gatherings.

I spent a lot of time with Anne. She said she was "scared" of "the splashes", so we mostly hung around the dry land stuff, or walked in the shallow water areas and climbed on boulders.

Anne catching Jeff. What a sweet big sister!

Anne really wanted to ride the wings, so Preston and I pushed her in a large plastic yellow seat that even had a piece fold down over her head, if that makes any sense... like a rollercoaster seatbelt. That was pretty good thinking. Preston and I were pushing her so high sometimes, she was pretty much lying on her back at a 90 degree angle! She loved it and didn't want to get off at all.

As I walked Anne back to the pavilion when we were finally done, we realized someone's shoe was on the roof! Uncle Brett climbed up to get it.

Preston and I had become pretty thirsty, but it was still going to be a little bit before we went home. We snuck down to see if we could drink from the waterfall. Preston then decided to try one of the squirty fountains that shoots from the ground. When he leaned forward to try, I pushed his face down so he got blasted. He then chased me around until he wrestled me into the water too, so my hair got soaked. As we passed the waterfall on our way out, I ducked behind it, and grabbed Preston's wrists to yank him through. He claims that only his shirt got wet, of course.

Mom said that she didn't have enough time to drop us off at home and be on time to pick up Stockton from his bowling class. We hung around Grandpa's house for a bit, and then piled into the car and drove down to the old bowling alley where his class was. Of course, he was about twenty minutes late getting out, so Mom could have taken us home, but it was fine. We grabbed food and/or milkshakes from Arctic Circle. I had Oreo marshmallow- nice!

Although Stockton didn't get to enjoy the Splash Pad today, we showed him pictures, and he just might be tempted to join us next time around. Sure was a cool place for somewhere that was free.