It’s school holiday time again, and in order to avoid the inevitable “I’m BOOOOOOOORED!”, I have formulated a cunning plan. In return for their help around the house, the boys and I are going to visit some of the local tourist spots.
Today we inspected the Orange Botanic Gardens and Adventure Playground:
The gardens are very beautiful, and given a few more weeks of this sort of warm, sunny weather they’ll be truly glorious. The adventure playground, however, was the big treat. It’s truly wonderful, an ongoing community project begun in 2002 when 1200 local volunteers built the original playground in six days. Local service clubs such as Rotary and Apex continue to add improvements like undercover barbecue areas, and the newest addition: a wheelchair swing.
After a picnic lunch, the boys ran around like maniacs for a couple of hours while I sat in the warm spring sunshine and worked on my sunburn sock. Then we explored the Botanic Gardens for an hour or so before heading home. The boys are now catatonic crashed out on the couch, watching a DVD, so I’m calling the day a resounding success.
Oh, one last thing: to the woman who had to climb halfway up the tube-slide to rescue her panicking toddler… Honey, invest in some jeans. Or at least a skirt that gives enough coverage that when your rear end is hanging out of said slide, innocent bystanders don’t accidentally look up from the sock they are knitting and see what you had for breakfast.
Thank you for your time.
Kiss My Frog 
Oh lordy, the mental image of the woman climbing the slide erased all of the previous beautiful photos so I had to go back and look at them again! Glorious day, excellent way to sneak in some knitting too!
I love your slideshow thingy – almost enough to make me forget the SNOW ALL THE WAY DOWN THE MOUNTAIN that is helping us to say goodbye to September but not to our socks, gloves or scarves.
And yes, anything with actual legs is better than a skirt when parenting outside the home. Culottes, even. Anything.
That is such a good scheme for the holidays. I know I haven’t been to some of the touristy spots, though because some are ‘educational’ I did take my classes there on excursion.