Journey to 100 Parks #69 - Pennsylvania Park - St. Louis Park, MN

For our Memorial Day park, we headed back to St. Louis Park.  It was pretty toasty and there was no shade.

Key Features

Parker had skinned his knee on Sunday and was still nursing it a bit.

But, a spinner always helps things feel better.

Esme spent most of our visit over on and in the little house.  It was a little relief from the heat.

Parker cooled down with that sweet swing breeze.

It gets an extra swing for the little house, but not high on the list for returning.  7 swings.

Kids4 - Local Love, Literacy, and Service Learning

We participated in our first Kids4 service project this weekend.  Kids4 is a new organization started by some of our friends from church that promotes community love, literacy, and service learning focusing on active anti-racism.  We get a book and project each month for the kids to read and participate in.  The authors are all local and chosen from diverse backgrounds.

This months activity was making a memorial planter.  We decorated an empty plastic container with torn paper.

On Saturday, we attended the monthly picnic at Becker Park where we planted a flower.  The group collected all of the planters and took them to memorial sites around the metro.

Esme enjoyed a PBJ Uncrustable before playing for a while.

We are looking forward to next month's project.

Friday Night Softball

We were finally able to get out to one of niece's JV softball games last night.  The kids did surprisingly well and we made it an hour.  It was so fun to watch her play at a higher level.  She often pitches, but played 3rd base for this game.

We brought the iPads to occupy them, but Esme preferred dancing and lounging most of the time.

The school season is almost over, but she will be playing summer ball in no time and we hope to catch some more games.

Journey to 100 Parks #68 - Rollings Hills Park - Plymouth, MN

We chose this park since it was nearby our niece's softball game.  It was a short, but fun visit.  We had our wild gear on for game 7 of the playoffs.  

Key Features

We had a short trail walk to get there.  On the way back, Esme said "I'm tired, I don't like these hills."

This is the first time we've seen a large swinging bench, Parker really liked that.He got it going really high.

While it was a large structure, it didn't have as many of the big hits that Parker and Esme like.

This would easily be a 9 with a few more spinning things, but gets a solid 8 swings.

Journey to 100 Parks #67 - Northwood Park - New Hope, MN

This is one of the closest parks to us and we have been here many times. We visited tonight because we were meeting some friends.

Key features

This is a huge park that covers a lot of physical ground and has so many activities.  I had to pull both kids away from the zipline, otherwise they would have spent our whole visit there.

Parker was really brave and climbed to the top of the rope structure.

I know I keep saying this, but I love how much confidence Esme continues to gain.

Then it was on to the zip line for most of the time.  Luckily, there weren't too many other kids, so they could ride them constantly.

We had so much fun playing With Esme's teacher, Kelli, and her sons, Travis and Thomas.  Hopefully they can join us again!

This one was borderline perfect in features, but it's close location pushes it over the edge.  Another 10 swing rating brings our total to 4.