Play Group at the Duck Pond

When we lived in Texas, the ward had the most awesome play group. I loved the idea of ladies with similar-ish aged kids getting together once a week to hang out with each other while the kiddos played. When we moved back to Provo, I was excited to see our new ward also had a play group. But unfortunately it was pretty lame. They have scheduled to go to the same park every single week, no matter the weather. And the few times I went in the beginning, no one from the ward was ever there. After a few months of doing nothing, and really wanting to, I finally decided to just get together with some other ladies in our apartment complex and start our own play group. It's been a really good thing for us. When the weather is good we usually rotate between different parks, and when the weather isn't good we hit up the McDonald's play place, or the mall play areas, or the Bean or Dinosaur museums on campus, or take turns having it at someone's house. The stuff we do is almost always free, unless we plan a special outing like the one we did at the zoo in July. The kids look forward to it every week almost as much as the moms do. I just plan a monthly schedule with input from the other ladies and print it up and pass it out. It's so easy, and so worth it. (This is not an exclusive play group by the way, if you live in Provo and you are reading this and want to come, let me know, I'll get you a schedule.)

Anyways, today for play group we went to the duck pond on the north end of campus. We decided to bring tin foil and let the kids make boats out of it to sail down the stream. My kids always love this activity, and the other kids seemed to like it too. I also brought string to tie to the boats. I thought it would be fun for them to be able to pull their boats back and forth. It turned out to be a really bad idea since the kids kept getting their strings tangled together and pulling their boats along the rocks. We finally just pulled the strings off and set the boats free. We followed them to the end and then fished them out.

I didn't have my camera, but Suzy got some great shots of my kids. Suzy found some really cute flowers to put in Kaitlyn and Adelia's hair.

Since we were already on campus, after play group was over, we went and ate lunch with Aaron. The boys love to go eat lunch with Daddy. And I think he might even enjoy having us around too. :)