Rate a Park - Entry # 1

OK, so I'm blatantly stealing the idea from one of my favourite blogs/families ever, at My Child I Love You ~ or, perhaps you could say I was inspired, as I often am by Lindsay's posts about her family. I don't think there are as many parks round here as there are in Lincoln, USA, but as the most we'll be doing this summer is getting out to a playpark or two in the afternoon if the weather's nice, I thought I'd make a project of it. The plan is to visit our usual park haunts and also explore some new ones and revisit some we've long forgotten, take some photos and give the park a score out of ten. Simple. Ha! Let's see how long I keep it going for!

Entry # 1: Horse and Groom Beer Garden playpark

 I waited in with the girls all day until FabDad came home with the 'new' car. We've been without a 7-seater for a while, which has proven tricky but just about manageable, and now have a big secondhand Kia Sedona as our family car. The girls had asked to go the pub at the weekend and it didn't fit in with what we were doing, so it seemed a good idea, on the first day of the school holidays, for me to testdrive the Kia to the nearby village which has a lovely pub with a beer garden. The girls love to have a drink and some crisps and a sweet snack out of the machine, it's a real treat for them!

There isn't that much for the girls to play on, but there's space and some trees to climb and they basically make their own fun. I also ended up running round in a race and did some swing pushing. 4thSister was very obliging by falling asleep in her pram at her usual naptime while we sat in the sunshine. It's been either unbearably hot for me here or not fit to leave the house because of the rain, so it was really pleasant.

I honestly think it's best when the girls are left together to make their own fun. It's an interesting dynamic this holidays with an 8, 7 and almost-3 year old. They tend to need time doing their own thing, a little input from me, and in between coming up with their own ideas of games and silliness. It's noisy chaos, with the odd screaming match, but I could be having a worse six weeks :-)

(And how did the park rate? I would have to say 5/10....1stSister gave it zero because of the lack of play equipment and 2ndSister gave it ten because she had fun!)