Surviving a Park

Parks are a favorite place here to hang out, have graduation parties, lay out picnics, let your kids run and play, celebrate birthday parties, etc. 

There are three nice parks here, and they are all very large, but this is the largest.

stock photo

Apparently, this city was more like a town until a couple of decades ago.

I've even heard that there were no buildings over three stories high in the entire city about 20 years ago, so this place has grown at quite a fast rate.

Thankfully, they marked off some land for parks because, there is hardly any green in the city apart from these three locations.

However, up close, the care and maintenance of the parks is a bit lacking.

Just last Spring, this climbing wall was put up in a new area for small kids.  Keira loved it.

It was painted as an outer space scene with different super heroes pictures at the top.  Kids could climb up to different ones:  Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, etc.

And now...

This hop scotch board was painted and cute with grass at both ends.

And now...

This spaceship slide had a great red, twisty slide coming out of this top hole before it had wire barring the way down.

And now...

Keira's favorite slide used to not scratch your legs and rip your pants on the way down.

And now...

The park used to be an all-walk park.  They didn't allow bikes, skateboards, etc.  I will say it would have been nice to drive your car in to your picnic location so you didn't have to carry all of your belongings for what seemed like miles.

And now...

They are apparently renting out golf carts.

We live in a country where road laws are either not taught, or they are just not observed, or maybe it's a combination of both.  Drivers straddle the dotted lines in the middle of the road instead of picking a lane.  Drivers do not yield or stop at intersections.  They barrel out and expect you to be looking for them instead of the other way around.  I could go on and on.

Anyway, this park used to be a safe place, but bringing certain driving skills inside the park may be cause to find a new place to hang out.

Or, I can be like Keira and just stay off the paths.  When all of her favorite places looked destroyed or broken, she simply said, "Let's go lay in the grass.  The grass is why I like to come here anyway."







































And there you have it, folks.

Holiday: Empty streets; Lost in the Park

During a recent Spring holiday that lasted one week, many people took the opportunity to leave the city and go to the mountains to participate in their national past time:  picnicking.

It was a city-dwellers dream.

If you got to go to the mountains and enjoy the cool area and greenery.  Awesome.

If you had to stay in the city for certain activities still going on but not endure traffic.  Awesome.

No car in sight meant Kylie got a lot of driving practice in.  She's going to start driving more and more, and starting with the benefit of no other drivers was a huge plus.

One day during the break, Keira and I decided to go to the park and ride the train.  We walked for at least 3/4 mile, and we could never catch the train (it's hard to know where it stops and where you can get on).  Apparently, we'd gotten there right after they started their last run for the day.

However, in the meantime, we discovered a new playground which we had never seen before.  Of course, this is not hard to do.  This park is huge.

Used with permission from Google Earth

Honestly, there are so many hidden nooks and crannies in this place, you could discover something every day if you spent a lot of time there.

At the new playground, we ran into a girl from Keira's school.  Her mom and dad were there, so while Keira played with her friend, I spoke as best I could with her parents.  They were very nice, and they talked slow enough so that I could understand most of what they were saying.

When we realized we were never going to catch the train, we decided to find our way back to our car.  

All I knew to do was head for skyscrapers in the distance near the place where I remembered parking.

The good news:  We found ANOTHER fun playground on the way back to the car.

The bad news:  It took us an hour to find our way out of the park.  

I didn't tell Keira how nervous I was getting, but I was completely lost on all of the paths, and I was having trouble finding our parking area.  I don't know if people have ever felt like that in Central Park in NYC, but I also wondered how many people had to spend the night in this park because they couldn't find their way out in the dark.

Maybe it's just my over-active imagination.

Keira was very excited when we made it to the front of the park, and we took celebratory pictures in front of the fountains.

Hot summer & Climbing

It was definitely a hot summer.

Some of our friends went to UK for the summer, and when they came back, this is what the candles in their house looked like.

 

A week before school started, we were invited by some friends to go climbing at a rock wall at a local park.  We arrived at 8am, and after hooking the ropes up, the wall was already too hot to touch.  

So, after our friends took all the ropes down, we drove across town to another park where the climbing wall at this particular park has its front in the shade in the morning.

Her first go.  Pretty good.

Then, Karis.

Caleb

And then Kylie.  She definitely has the legs for it!

Treaty of Rome 1957

Happy Independence Day!  As I've been listening to the soundtrack of "Hamilton," and get more interested in seeing it someday (when the price of a ticket won't cost me my firstborn), I have been reading more and more about that period in our history.

The Declaration of Independence I have heard of, but have you ever heard of the Treaty of Rome?  Maybe some of you history buffs have, but I never had, so I was curious as to why the UN was having a big 60th anniversary party for it in the park.

If you are interested in what it is, read the following quote from Britannica; otherwise, skip to the following paragraph.  

"It established the European Economic Community (EEC), creating a common market and customs union among its members.  The Treaty Establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, for the purpose of developing peaceful applications of atomic energy, was signed by the same countries (Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) on the same day, and therefore the two treaties together are often called the Treaties of Rome."

I looked up "Treaty of Rome" on wikipedia and found this quote, "It remains one of the two most important treaties in the modern-day European Union (EU)."  So there you go. 

Anyway, one of the ladies in the girls' ballet class is from Japan, and she was going to be a part of organizing this celebration.  She asked the dance teacher to choose three girls to perform at the park during the ceremony.  Kylie and Karis were two of the three.

There were a lot of dignitaries and cameras present.

There was a cake cutting, some elementary school singers, and then the balloon release.

Well...some of the balloons released.

Others just laid down because they were tired.

 However, they made a lovely backdrop for the girls from where I was sitting.

 Caleb videoed them on a camera that I don't know how to download from, but if you are interested, I have a video of them performing the same dance at a local mall a few weeks later.  They were asked, along with some other performers, to "open" a fashion show at the mall.

However, some man steps in front of my camera near the end of their dance as he tried to figure out where people could find seating.  But you can still get a gist of the dance :)

Click HERE to see the video.

💥💥Happy 4th of July!💥💥

Worship in the Park

Last Friday, we had fellowship in the city park with two other families.  

It was early in the morning, so there weren't a lot of people there, but there were some.

We set out our blankets, and Doug led us in worship.

Our voices, resonating through the park, made me smile.  I thought about people who could hear us and what their thoughts were.  

What is that music?

Where is it coming from?

Those people sound happy to be singing.

I know some drew near for a little while to look.

How great to honor Him in a place where He used to be worshipped and will be once again someday.