These days, Thursdays find Charlotte
and I driving straight from work and daycare in Richmond to nana and
grandad’s house in North Van, where we stay the night so that
Charlotte can hang out with nana the next day while I’m at work.
With the days so long at this time of year, we had plenty of time
tonight to check out a nearby playground after dinner. We made a
return visit to Draycott Park; we had discovered this little park in
the woods last summer while looking for a geocache, “Whatev’s”.
We had found that cache back then, so there was no caching for us
tonight – we were just in it for the playground! This is one of
the loveliest locations for a playground that I have seen so far;
it’s completely surrounded by trees and there are several trails
providing access from different directions. We parked near the main
entrance, walked past the basketball court, collecting flowers and
rocks as we went, rounded a bend in the trail, and there was the
playground, nestled amongst towering evergreens. It’s a very
futuristic playground with silver towers curving up to the sky!
The bucket swings were on a very short
chain and so Charlotte soon pronounced them “boring” and wanted
to go back to climbing. The slide here is a very fast one – she
insisted on holding hands to go down and I had to slow her down a bit
at the bottom to prevent her from shooting off the end! Some other
kids came along, three more two-year-olds in fact, and they did the
slide on dad’s lap. I am so against kids sliding down on an
adult’s lap and here’s why:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/a-surprising-risk-for-toddlers-at-playground-slides/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.
There was a piece of equipment on the
playground that was new to us – a kind of twisting tube to climb up
or down. I admit that the thought of Charlotte attempting it when
she’s older was quite scary to me – but then I thought that that
was a good thing – most of the playgrounds that we have seen have
little in the way of challenge to the older kids. Another mum was
there with her older kids; she wouldn’t let them go on it and said
that it looked dangerous and that it had something “missing”. I
hope that when Charlotte is old enough to try it, I will be brave
enough to let her!
Charlotte got right into the wood
chips, picking up handfuls and putting them in her hair. Agh! What
to do – may as well just take a picture! But then she put them in
my hair, so I had to tell her that was naughty and I didn’t want
her to put wood chips in my hair. So she didn’t – but Owlie did!
She told Owlie off for being naughty – and I had to tell her that
no one was allowed to put wood chips in my hair, neither her
nor
Owlie! It was back to nana and grandad’s after that – we hadn’t
planned a bath night, but one was necessary after this particular
trip to the playground! The park is located at N 49.20.281 W
123.01.451:
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z7IAXiVD2wGY.ke14vi-3MYtI&pli=1
We were on our way home from nana and grandad's when we made an impromptu decision to stop off at Deer Lake Park. The rhodos were in full bloom and we had a great walk through the gardens. Charlotte had me read the plaque on every single bench we passed (kinda morbid!) and she asked everyone she met if they knew that she was FOUR - with four fingers prominently pointed in their direction. We came across this climbing frame and Charlotte did a great job of climbing on it. She fell off a couple of times before she finally managed to make it to new heights - but then she found herself stuck. I had to guide her down as she was in a bit of a state and she made it safely to terra firma in the end. It was nice to see her challenged by it as so many of the playgrounds have been scaled back. I'll have to take her there again and see if she can get up higher next time - and more to the point, see if she can get back down again! The playground is located at N49.14.416 W 122.58.277 and is point no. 154 on the map at the bottom of home page.
