We are going to keep taking advantage of the mild weather while we have it. This was truly a neighborhood playground.
Key Features
As you can see, it was a little hard to name many key features. This was a small, basic park. The only novel feature was the cascade climber, which Parker really enjoyed. The both spent some time rolling down the hill and Esme and I played hide and seek. There weren't a lot of places to hide and Esme picked up on my faux searching to keep it a bit more lively.
The cascade climber bumps this from 5 swings to 6.
Here are some other fun things from this month. One of our last trips out to my parents before quarantine and the dramatic increase in cases was to drop them off for an overnight. We had a campfire with s'mores and ate pizza.
We stopped at a school park on a morning Jimmy was working. It's not eligible for our #journeyto100parks, so I didn't feel bad going.
Parker had a ton of fun at school before his quarantine. I got these fun pictures of him playing with shaving cream.
We celebrated our 13th first-date-iversary by getting some Caribou. We discovered in September that the location of our fist date had closed, so we had to go elsewhere. Luckily, we found one with a drive-thru.
We've been rooting on our favorite teams this month. Success has been hit or miss, but we will always be on the bandwagon!
In addition to the Vikings sweatshirts I made for the kids, we've been crafting in other ways too. Church has been dropping off monthly kids packs and we are a bit behind on them, but broke some out this month. Esme made a #1 Jesus foam finger.
I made a shirt for my cousin's daughter's birthday. I already had the final made from my Secret Santa a few years ago and added the 4.
Lastly, I've been brainstorming ideas to hang art in Esme's room like we have for Parker. I finally though of a little draped twine string. I was able to use a screw already in the wall from the baby monitor, added three more and connected them with some time. I had clothespins on hand that will be used to hang her artwork.
I am looking forward to some more crafting now that we will be hunkering down for winter.
It was another "quarantine" birthday. I remember thinking there was no way we'd being doing this in November when we celebrated Esme's birthday in April, but here we are. Jimmy's parents stopped by last week with Parker's present. He was overjoyed to receive a new toy washing machine. He played with it non-stop for the first couple days and even set up his own little laundry room in his closet. We got some battery lights from them a while back and I plan to put one in there so he can see what he's doing.
I've known for a while we weren't going to be able to have a traditional party, so I didn't do my typical planning months in advance. We normally coordinate with his Halloween costume, but that was not super creative. It came to me a couple weeks ago that we could do something with fidget spinners since Parker loves them. I made him a shirt to wear and we put up a sign like we did or Esme.
#allthespinningthings
I made sure to take our middle-of-the-night picture. He actually stirred a bit, but I just told him to go back to sleep.
This was my first time carving from a sheet cake. I got a half sheet pan a couple years ago and thought it would work well for this design. I cut one layer in full and cut two halves from the sides.
Basic chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Jimmy keeps bugging me to make yellow cake with chocolate frosting, but that limits design options to brown... Chocolate is Parker's favorite and it's fun to have any color frosting I wneed.
Parker saw me working on it the night before and couldn't' stop talking about it.
Decorations were pretty minimal since I used what was on hand. A streamer curtain and some spinners made from paper hangin from the light.
We ordered Domino's for supper and Parker thought it was fun to have it dropped off on the front step.
My parent's stopped by and we chatted through an open window. Parker opened their gift and we all sang "Happy Birthday" together.
We were able to snap a quick socially distanced picture before letting them get back to the car and out of the cold.
We got Parker a playset steering wheel that we installed in his room. I may need to get a longer lag bolt to better secure it and I added some felt between some of the parts so it isn't as noisy, but still spins freely.
The final birthday surprise was some balloons left anonymously. I am going to assume it was a neighbor since we had the sign out front, but it could have been anyone.
