Yesterday my children and I went to find a park to have a picnic at and enjoy some time outside since most of this week someone in our house has been sick and we have not been able to go many places. At first, I was just going to take them to a place that we have been to a few times, but then I decided to ask them if they wanted to try a new park and since we have only been living here for about a year and a half there are plenty of new parks to explore. The majority said to go to a new park and so we headed to one that we had not been to before, but upon arriving there it was so packed there was no place to park and did not look like we would have a place to sit for lunch. With this being the situation we decided to head up the little mountain here called Alum Rock Park where there
There are two different playgrounds, one for older children that has big slides, swings and monkey-bars, and then there is another one with a cement eagle and ants and baby swings. My children love going to the younger playground and making up adventures while pretending to be baby eagles with the big eagle slide. We had some food while they would run and play in between eating. The youngest had fun just trying to go for a little walk on his own, which made me have to go and chase him down. Then you have my middle son who just loves to wander off sometimes and so after we ate we decided to go on a little walk.
There is a path that winds its way throughout the entire park, which is why it is such a great place to go for a hike. This path has a few smaller paths coming off of it in different areas. We tried to go up one of the side paths back to the main path, but since we had so much stuff I had the stroller so I did not have to carry everything and my youngest as well. This path happened to be a bumpy mess with stairs at the end of it to get back up on the main path, and so we decided to take the longer route and not try to get up there. This path leads us past a building that houses a youth science center. With all the times that we had been up to the park I had never seen the center open, but yesterday it was open and so my children and I decided to take a look at it.
We enjoyed seeing the animals that they have living there. They had two live owls inside that had been injured when they were babies and can never live outside. There were a few different snakes, and some spiders and a few other live animals there. They also have quite a lot of stuffed animals that you could see and find out information on. There was a touch table that had different kinds of animal bones and other things. Also there were information areas throughout where you could teach your children about the animals in California.
The people inside the center were very friendly and talked to anyone who came inside about the place and the animals that they have there. While we only saw two owls, there is an aviation housing next to the building where they have other birds that cannot live on their own in the wild for various reasons. We spent a few minutes and my children kept going between the two rooms looking at all of the different things they could find.
After our visit to the Science center we continued on our hike up the hill and looked for different nature things we could take home with us to maybe use in some way to create some Art. While we are a big reading family we also enjoy doing art stuff together and we thought it would be fun to use nature to make art.
This post is about our adventure in nature, but look for another one coming on what we did with the things we found in nature.
While I know that every parent believes they have good looking children, I also know that every time I go anywhere with my children we always get stopped by someone commenting on how cute my kids are. This trip was no different. On our way up the hill, my daughter was stopping every few feet and this older couple was on their way down and stopped to comment on how cute she was. The man offered her a mandarin and when her twin brother saw it he wanted one as well and then my oldest also received one from him. It was so generous of him to share with my children and they all enjoyed the attention they got.
We all had a fun time and the only reason we left was so that we could get the youngest home to take a nap. While he likes to be outside just like his older brothers and sister, he still is little and needs to get extra rest than the other three. We are hoping to take their dad up there to see the science center and hopefully do some hiking together.
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