Picnic in the Park

 

 

 We have the grandchildren today while their parents have a weekend in Melbourne. Well, we are sharing them, as their other nanna had them last night and brought them to us today. We love having them but they do make you realise how much work they are and how much less energy we have compared to them.

 

 

 

  I try to find different things for them to do when they are here, but as our house is not set up for active children, it is difficult to keep them occupied outside.
Although we are in the same house where our own children were raised, we have changed the garden and now have more plants and shrubs with only small paths between, but when our children were home we had the back yard mainly lawned so the children could play cricket, basketball, football or whatever else was in vogue at the time.
Noah & Amelie were no sooner inside & got themselves organised in their bedroom, actually organised is not really the appropriate word, as they just threw their bags into the bedroom, then argued over who plays the piano first. This is just in the first few minutes, then they find the "play box" and spread the contents over the table and the floor.  The fridge and cupboards are always interesting for the grandchildren as they like to see what treats are there that they are not allowed to have at home, and of course I always have something special for them.   Oh, its such fun at Nanna & Pops house.

We decided that we would go to the park and have a picnic tea.


 I made some sandwiches, packed some fruit and a few biscuits and put the kids and the food in the car and we set off for Thorndon Park.



 



 

 

 

The playground was great and Amelie looked so cute as a flower.

 

 

I was surprised to see that there were so many people there with the same idea as us, but it is a lovely park and the weather was perfect so why wouldn't they be there.  We were lucky to find an empty picnic table in the shade and not far from the playground area so we could watch the kids while they played.  Noah likes to investigate  further afield so he was allowed to go further as long as he could still see us, which worked for a few minutes, but we soon had to go and remind him as he likes to do his "disappearing" trick.  We have had many anxious moments looking for him as he has the ability to just vanish in the blink of an eye, and just when we are about to panic he appears from  under or behind something and can't understand why we are so upset as he knew where we were all the time.

We went for a walk with the children and found a lovely lake and waterfall.  The children enjoyed climbing around the rocks and fortunately they didn't fall in.  It is such a nice park and we all agreed we would definitely come back again as there were other areas which the children wanted to investigate.