Doanes Park Playground and More Nature Art

The weather was nice today, except for a bit of a stiff breeze at times, but we took advantage of it and played outside all afternoon.

Derrick and I decided to take a late lunch, and took the kids to Doanes Park to do some batting practice.  Everyone had a great time.  Elliot and Everett ran more than they hit, but they think that is the best part of baseball, so it was just fine.

After batting practice Derrick went to do a few things with some houses and the kids and I grabbed a picnic lunch at the new playground.  The kids enjoyed playing and exploring the new equipment and seeing how things worked.  They LOVED it, and when they were tired they decided to go to the other playground to play.

The new playground is built for older kids, but everyone had a great time exploring.

The "slide" made me nervous, but they had a great time on it!

Elliot and I hung out on the large disc swing and watched.

Ethan and Everett played a game where one was a spider and the other had to try not to get caught.

Elliot loved swinging.

It was actually a pretty comfortable swing.

We headed over to the other playground, let them play for a bit, and Elliot practiced crossing the tethered pole things about 50 times once he got up the courage to try it without holding my hand.  He was very proud of himself and showed both his brothers how well he could cross without any help!

Elliot, unsure about crossing.

Notice the concentration.

The goggles are something I picked up a while back from the thrift store.
He likes to wear them every now and then.  He's a funny kid!

They played for a good amount of time then got interested in the sticks that were all over in the treed area next to the playground.  We decided to try to make another nature art sculpture (inspired by artist, Andy Goldsworthy) and quickly figured out the best way to do so.

At first we had no plan, and started to put sticks everywhere they would fit.

Then we started to see what we liked best, and organized them.

Finished, Everett and Ethan were very proud of their creation!  They thought they looked like windows.

Elliot helped somewhat, but mostly gathered sticks and played in the dirt.

  

They kept asking me to take photos.

Everett thought they looked like nails being driven into the ground.

  

It took about an hour, and once we were close to done they wanted to do more on a different set of trees, but I was getting tired and Elliot had to go potty, so we decided to head home.

It was a great day and they can't wait to go back and do more nature art with the sticks, leaves and acorns we saw.  Creativity is pretty contagious!