New Playground For Finley

As my official last day of summer with Finley, we said goodbye to Dan who was off to frisbee practice and then hopped into a car to check out a playground that we have driven near dozens of times but never experienced.  Last night I googled, "playgrounds sandbox" plus some neighboring towns' names and up popped Beaver Brook in Belmont, just a five minute drive away.  While we hope someday Finley will branch out to experience all that playgrounds have to offer, he's currently in his sandbox phase so a playground without one is not of much use to us.  I knew Beaver Brook was a water spray park during the summer but I had no idea there was also a playground there.  A "sunken sandbox" was promised from our google results and thankfully, we were not misled!

 Finley sold me some woodchip tickets several times during our time there and even inspired some of his fellow toddlers to pile up "tickets" on the shelf and sell them.

 We were in and out of the sandbox, climbing on the rocks that are usually getting soaked by water in the spray park area, checking out the big structure that had some wheels, musical toys, and bridges, but soon Finley found the toddler structure (which happened to be right next to the sandbox).  For those that know Finley well, he isn't the biggest fan of slides.  He liked them in the spring, but seems to have become a bit fearful of them this summer.  But after he went down the small toddler one on my lap a few times, he was doing it over and over on his own.  Then, he watched a little girl go down his nemesis, the tunnel slide, and simply wouldn't be outdone.  He asked me to go up with him and we slid down together a twice.  On the third go around, I accidentally let him slip down the slide without me.  I followed him down calling "catch me" so he turned around to grab me and then said "again!"  He must have gone up the ramp, across the jumpy bridge, and down the tunnel slide a half dozen times with pure excitment and pride.  He even yelled "did it!" a few times.

 

 After he went down this time, he ran back laughing to "catch me" as I came down.

 I was very proud of our little chicken for doing this, what will be conquer next?

And just so you don't think Dan misses out on all our weekend fun because of frisbee, here's a picture I took as we took a fantastic walk around Fresh Pond Saturday morning.

Nice weather rules!