On this beautiful spring morning, we discovered a new park that we had never been to before. We did this by going to the closest geocache with the word "park" in the title, and sure enough it checked all the boxes - a cache to find and a playground to explore! We found the cache first, "Mirda's B-day Cache". It was an easy one to find - we saw it as we approached. There were lots of muggles around, but they were engrossed in a search of their own - they all had metal detectors and were spread out all over the park, seeking treasure. I guess it's more lucrative than geocaching, if less certain of a successful hunt!We had a very interesting time at this park... This ominous sign greeted us as we settled Theo in with a stick to chew while we played. Seems like it has satisfied some insurance company somewhere. Luckily, Charlotte was wearing none of the prohibited articles of clothing - even her shoes were Velcro, so we didn't need to worry about a terrible shoelace accident marring our day. We met a sweet girl named Josephine who just turned ten last week; she was playing all by herself when we arrived, but she loved helping Charlotte get to where she wanted to go on the playground. Even the small structure had very big steps - Charlotte was only able to climb it by going up the slide! Charlotte so badly wanted to go on the big slide, but there was no way she could climb up there by herself. There were three steps to get up, each of which was about two-and-a-half feet tall. I don't really like helping her on the playground too much - I want her to achieve things for herself - but I broke my rule on this one and stationed myself on the second step to hoist her up from above and then boost her up from below. I was getting plenty of exercise myself by doing this! I did have to run to the bottom of the slide the first couple of times, but soon she was launching herself down with no problem and no need for me. Josephine often hung off the edge of the slide like a monkey, cheering Charlotte as she spiralled down to the ground.
Just as we were starting to think about leaving (or at least I was; Charlotte never thinks about leaving!), a couple of boys came up with their grandad lagging a little behind. One of the boys was about five and he sat at the top of the spiral slide, but seemed hesitant to go down. I asked him if he would like me to catch him at the bottom, but he said "My grandad says I'm not allowed to play with you." That was me told! Josephine and I raised eyebrows at each other. We were getting ready to leave anyway and as we headed out, I heard the boy say to his Grandad, "Please, can I play with someone?!?" I really don't know what the point of it was. How very unhealthy to prevent a child from playing with other kids at the playground. Isn't that what they are supposed to do? In order to learn social skills and maybe even just have fun? I guess I wasn't to take it personally because it seems he wasn't allowed to play with anyone. Josephine came running after us as I was getting Charlotte into the car. We had dropped Owlie and she was returning him. Josephine, the chance of you ever reading this are exceedingly slim, but you were a ray of sunshine in an otherwise very cold playground! The park is located at: N 49.14.024 W 123.02.803: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z7IAXiVD2wGY.ke14vi-3MYtI&pli=1
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