A Weekend At the Park

Sarah got back-to-back park visits this weekend! The weather was just gorgeous, and I'm a big fan of hanging out at the park any chance we get. On Saturday we went to Sar-Ko-Par Trails Park. They recently renovated the whole park, and now the lake is beautiful and the play equipment is all new and fun! Sarah loves to watch the ducks (they're really geese, but she calls them ducks), play on the swings, go down the slide, and bounce on the turtle. I love the park's beautiful scenery and the joy I get to see on my daughter's face!

She's all about going down the slide on her own now!

She's also all about riding this bouncy turtle thing!

What a beautiful afternoon!

When we got home, Sarah continued her fun by watching the start of the K-State vs. Baylor game with us.  Luckily, she went to bed after K-State scored their first touchdown.  She slept well, thinking that K-State had tied the game and would remain the #1 football team in the nation.  The rest of us did not sleep as soundly, dear Sarah, and dreams of lost Heismans danced in our heads...

Here she is celebrating the one and only touchdown of the first quarter (notice that she refused to give up control of the remote long enough to do a true "touchdown" gesture?).

The next morning, I was feeling under the weather partly because I was depressed over the fact that K-State lost to Baylor (BAYLOR!!!), but mostly because I had a nasty, nasty cold.  Luckily, Sarah knows that you feed a fever and starve a cold...or cover a cold with all of your stuffed animals...

How can anyone feel bad when you've got this kiddo (and all of her stuffed animals) sitting on top of you?!?

Sarah's stuffed animal cure worked its magic, and I pulled it together long enough to take her to the park again on Sunday afternoon.  This time we went to my favorite part of Shawnee Mission Park - Walnut Grove!  They have a great play area, but there are also really neat old trees, a wooden bridge, and a creek to throw rocks and leaves into.  Maybe we'll try to get next year's Christmas photos taken there...

Here's Sarah playing with the wood chips and not the play equipment (she also loves to play with pea gravel!).

Once she gets bored with the wood chips, she DOES like to bounce on this thing!

No trip to Walnut Grove would be complete without throwing stuff in the water, though!  Leaves are especially fun because you get to watch them float downstream.