Splash & Play

This afternoon I decided to take the kids and go check out one of the city parks that has a "splash pad" (water fountain play area). I think there are 4 parks in the city that have these, so we went to the closest one (and I've learned that there are a TON of parks in this town!). I'll admit that I was a just a little bit uneasy in the neighborhood -- it seemed more run-down, we were definitely the minority there and there were several older teens/young adults standing along the street with their rap music blaring, etc. But we were the only ones at the splash area initially, and we were fine.

Here's a picture where I tried to get the whole splash pad in the picture:


The different fountains would come on at various times so they weren't all on at once. You turn the water on by rubbing on top of the yellow pole. After a while, it turns off so if you still want to play, you just go rub it some more.

Of course I took what seemed like a bazillion pictures (experimeting with shutter speed for this week's photography lesson!). Here is just one of each of the kids.

I think this spray fountain was their favorite -- they liked to get underneath it.


Here's Hannah waiting for that fountain to turn on over her. Just a tidbit about her -- notice that she is wearing a bracelet. She has never been big into jewelry. She got this bracelet from a friend in her kindergarten class for her 6th birthday party (his mom had made it). She wore it that day and promptly broke it so the beads spilled everywhere. I tried to put it back together and then set it aside. A couple of days ago, she found it in my closet and wants to wear it all the time now. I guess she just needed to be a little older to appreciate it!


I had a real hard time getting Courtney to look at me for any pictures, so in this shot you also get the nice water drops going across her face (but they're frozen ever-so-nicely with my high shutter speed, don't you think?)


And I cracked up when I saw Hayley laying on the ground like this. Either she was really tired or cold and could feel some warmth from the pavement.


After the splashing fun was over, the kids wanted to go over to the neat looking playground:


Again, I tried taking a bunch more pictures but got lots of shadows because of the bright sun. A few still turned out okay, though, I thought.




(There's a boy who needs a hair cut!)

The girls were actually spinning around when I got this one:


And you have no idea how hard it was to get all four of them to come together for a minute for a picture! They all wanted to keep going different directions! Maybe they are starting to get tired of mom and all her pictures. But at least I got one!