Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Fun at the Playground

We have been having some beautiful, hot weather here this week! Monday was especially nice, as it hadn't become too humid yet. In the afternoon, we took the kids to the playground. Sam had so much fun, and Julia had a pretty good time, although she wasn't as impressed as Sam was. :) There were a lot of moms and kids there when we arrived, but the crowd thinned out after about half an hour or so, and pretty soon we had the place to ourselves. Jim took that opportunity to go down a couple of the slides with Julia.

It was so much fun to watch Sam this year--he is big enough to climb and play on almost everything, and didn't get intimidated by the bigger kids, even plowing over them when they were trying to walk up the slides as he was coming down. :)

It was kind of an eye opener to listen to the way some of these little kids talk to each other--and another reminder of why I don't want my kids in public school. (This is not a criticism of any readers who do have kids in public school, by the way. :) But our personal preference and desire is to not expose our little ones to the kind of influences that they could absorb there. We picked up enough negative stuff from our Christian friends in Christian school!--not trying to knock Christian schools, either, here--I just mean that as parents I think we have to be really alert to what our kids are picking up, no matter where they are. We even have to be careful what they pick up from us at home!) Anyway . . . I know those children were just parroting what they hear their parents say, or what they've heard on TV, or whatever, and they don't know any better. So I'm not trying to pick on them, and I don't have a problem taking my kids to the playground and letting them play with other kids. I am just thankful to be able to be there to see and hear what's going on. :) Just thinking out loud here, I guess . . . bear with me. :) One thing that I would like to work on, in future visits to the playground, is to get to know some of the other moms, and hopefully be a witness to them. I have a hard time reaching out to people, as I'm not naturally an outgoing person, but I know that is something I need to work on. Most of the moms there seem to already know each other, so that makes it a little hard, too--I don't want to seem like I'm butting in. But, we all have kids and so we have one thing in common, so I think it wouldn't be that hard to strike up a conversation. Pray for me in this--it would be good for me to have some opportunities to get out of my comfort zone and reach out to people.

Here are some pictures from the playground. Just click to enlarge. Enjoy!


Sam on the moving bridge
Looking down at Mommy
Fun on the swing
Not too sure if she's having fun or not :)
On the curvy slide

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