Two Parks in One Day

Clay had a long, rough week of studying last week. He has been feeing a little overwhelmed with all of his school work and finals coming up in the next couple of weeks. I wanted to get out of the house so we could have a nice little break as a family. I had heard of the community park in Anthem, a few miles north of us. They have a cute little working train that goes around the park and a huge play area. We decided to head up there to play. We took a picnic lunch and ate on the grass by one of the duck ponds. After lunch we fed someof our left-overs to the ducks. Zane got so mad at us because we wouldn't let him go in the pond. He would have just walked right into it and been perfectly happy!  
After feeding the ducks, we took a ride on the train. Zane loved watching the people, dogs, and ponds pass by. There was even a little tunnel that we got to pass through.

After the train, we went to the playground. The whole play area was HUGE! There were so many places for kids to run around and some of the play structures were close to three stories high! We spent most of our time around the toddler play area and in the sand. I loved that there were dinosaur skeletons all over in the sand.

I love the picture where Clay is sitting on the bench and Zane is sitting on the ground. Zane was over playing somewhere else and Clay started making noise by rubbing his feet against the ground.  Zane was so excited by the noise, that he went and sat by Clay and started doing the same thing. They sat there for quite a while laughing and giggling and rubbing their feet against the ground, grinding the sand.  I wish that I had gotten a better picture of it but I didn't want to move any close for fear of disturbing the moment.

After going home to take naps we headed back out to another park a little closer to home to picnic and play with friends. I didn't get any pictures there, though. The park was way crowded and there were kids playing football right around us as we were trying to eat dinner. After such a busy day of playing at parks, though, Zane was worn out and went right to bed as soon as we got home!