Minding Grandchildren 101 - The Park

Why the park? 

A. They aren't messing up the house while they are in the park. 

B. They use up some of that bountiful energy supply and (hopefully) sleep more soundly at night.

C. Fresh air is good for them and us. 

D. Exercise is good for them and us. 

E. They just love to go to the park and think we are the best grandparents in the world for taking them.

F. Add more of your own reasons by leaving a comment.

The red brick house that you can't see behind the trees is the Dragon Lady Grotto.  This is only a fraction of our park.  It's big enough for 2 Rugby League fields and we figure that it's about 1 kilometer in circumference.  So, aren't we lucky to have so much playground for the grandchildren?  The down side is that until this time of year it's too hot to make use of it until late in the day.

On Saturday we looked after the McTavish grandchildren again.  For more than an hour we were in the park and even Monkey had a great time.  He forgot all about his obsession with food for the whole time.

There is a cycle path around the park and various (adult size) gym equipment also dotted around the park close to the path.  Lion can just reach the handle bars on this one.  I'm pretty pleased that I managed to catch the action with my camera.

Another action shot I'm fairly happy with is this one of Dragon playing hopscotch, but I think it would have been better if I'd got down really low - like on my belly - to get the feel of the distance between his feet and the ground.

Of course it can't be all sunshine and Lion had a momentary funk when Dragon's weight stabilised the roundabout thingo and stopped it from turning for him.  I told him to keep frowning because I wanted a good 'grumpy' photo.  So, naturally, he started laughing and giggling, but not before I "shot" this one.

Usually they want to stay in the park forever and we have tears when it is time to leave. The really amazing thing was that this time they were happy to leave and come home with us.  Maybe they were getting hungry after all.

Sunday drivers

 

Actually it wasn't a Sunday.  By the way- what is the origin of the 'Sunday driver' equals 'an accident looking for a place to happen driver'?  Is it something to do with Sunday drivers being sightseers and therefore not focused on the road and traffic?  But back to my story-

Actually the pictures are the story.  Mummy McT took the photos and I made them into a collage (with a little help from Picasa3).  Get a load of that lawn.  That's how everything looked after weeks of good (a bit too good at times) rain.  Well maybe not EVERY thing, but everything green and growing took on an almost surreal brilliance. I have never seen so much of the countryside looking quite that fluorescent shade of green before.  We get so used to grass looking a sort of washed out light tan colour and eucalyptus and wattle trees tend to cope with the severe sun by having grayish foliage, that the greenness of the grass looks positively unnatural.  But back to my story-

Mummy McT and Chimera took all of the children to the park directly over the road for them to have a play with their trikes and scooters and for Cheetah to practise on his new (at Christmas) RipStik.  Poor Cheetah. It was much harder than he was expecting and it seemed that he really did have two left feet.  I'm sure practise will get him there in the end.

As for his younger cousins, Dragon and Lion, they have about 12 and 14 years to go before they can get their driver's licences.  Let's hope their concentration and coordination improves by then.

In case you are wondering, there were plenty of wheels to go around and Little Bear and baby Monkey were there too.

Monkey's wheels were on his stroller of course.