Morning at the Park

I haven't taken the boys to any local parks since we moved. Our neighborhood has nice sidewalks to jog on and we sometimes go up to the elementary school playground, but we hadn't ventured out to any of the local parks...until today. Now I'm sorry that we waited so long! There's a trail paved thru the woods that connects 4 or 5 of the local parks. It was a gorgeous day for a run. Since it was a little cool this morning, I broke out the boys jackets.

The jog thru the woods was so peaceful!

We definitely didn't feel like we were in the middle of the city! Brody kept telling me to "be careful around the river". There were some hills thru the woods and on a few of them you were running down hill (pretty fast) straight towards one of the bridges over the creek. I think Brody thought we might run right into the creek!

After a while, Brody said that he wanted to get down to run because he needs his exercise too. I'd have him run up ahead of me to a landmark while I did lunges (pushing the stroller) and then I'd sprint to catch up with Brody. It was so much fun that I think I did too many lunges! I'm really gonna feel it tomorrow.

Brody loves being outside and kept saying things like, "It's so beautiful outside today!" and "Look at this gorgeous garden!" (which was really a sprawl of wildflowers). Kids really help you stop and notice the little things.

After jogging for almost an hour, we arrived back where we started...the playground!!! Barrett was itchin' to get out of the stroller and within seconds both boys were running for the swings. Brody was practicing swinging by himself (and was doing a pretty good job). He smiled really big for me when I took out the camera.

Barrett, on the other hand, refused to look at the camera! (He wasn't really acting snooty, he was just watching the other kids...but it looks like he's being snooty in this picture! lol)

Once Brody saw the camera, he ran around asking me to take pictures of him doing everything so that we could show Daddy when we got home. He was really proud of being able to climb this rope thing (I think it's because there was a big kid there that was crying while his mom made him climb it...and Brody wanted to show off that he wasn't scared.)

Barrett really wanted to climb too...but he's not quite big enough yet.

He finally found a spot where he could reach up and grab the ropes with both hands.

But he decided it was easier to hang on one handed.

Around 11:00 Brody started telling me he was making fried chicken with the mulch off of the ground. The more he talked about friend chicken...the hungrier I got! I could tell the boys were getting hungry too. Brody was just pretending to eat his "fried chicken"...but Barrett really tried to eat it.

I decided it was time for us to head home and make lunch (no...I didn't stop for fried chicken...that would've made my morning workout pointless!) I had so much fun with the boys this morning. We'll definitely be doing this again soon!