We went to Van Dyck Park in Fairfax this afternoon. Van Dyck Park is built on the edge of a shallow terrain feature that a military man would call a draw, a southerner might call a holler, and a mountain northwesterner might call a drainage. The playground is at the top, on level ground. They've leveled and filled in on the side of the natural hill to make a kind of bowl with a big, level playing field between the playground and the creek at the bottom. Since they've filled it in to make the playing fields, the drop at the end down to the creek is pretty steep.
They have a paved "fitness trail" around the park (it's NOVA, so it couldn't just be a path). After the kids played a while in the playground, we went for a walk around the trail. It circles around the rim of the playing field and drops down to the creek bed and loops around and comes up by the field to the playground. When we got to the bottom, I challenged the kids to race me to the top of the big hill up to the field. Of course, they did.
 | |
| I tried to get them to do the arms raised, "we made it!" pose. |
When we got up there, Janelle yelled down to Jeni, "Mommy, we can see the playground from up here! Come up here and see!" With that Jeni started up. The kids watch a lot of Diego and Dora, which always involve saving something, so Janelle took about two steps down the hill, stuck her arm out, and said, "Mommy when you get this far, take my hand!" I egged Joseph on and told him to go down and push Mommy up. He ran down to about 2/3 of the way up and grabbed her hand and started pulling her up. That upset Janelle, because she was supposed to help Mommy, but Jeni got to Janelle and extended her other hand to her and let them both pull her up.
Once Jeni got there, I challenged the kids to another trip. Down we went, and back up we came.
No comments:
Post a Comment