Playing at the park with Naanii

After coming home for a quick lunch, we got ready to hit up some playgrounds with Naanii. Today will likely be the only sunshine-y day we have with her. Our forecast for the coming week is rain, rain, and more rain (what a surprise (we've gotten about 19 inches of rain so far this year already (making us, so far, much wetter than Seattle (honestly, with an average of about 50 inches of rain per year, we usually out-rain Seattle but they've also had a particularly wet start their their year))). Anyway, we knew we had to soak up this sunshine while we had the opportunity, so we spent the afternoon playing outside.

This is just a cute picture we took before leaving for church this morning. Zoë did her own hair and Alexander had to copy her. When she said, "Isn't my hair beautiful?" Alexander said, "Isn't my hair b...cute?" He doesn't like to copy anyone verbatim, though he does like to borrow sentence structures. He's a walking, talking thesaurus.

Here's the crew (minus me):

Here's Miriam and Rachel balancing on some blockade pillars:

Here's me and Andrew:

Here's Naanii admiring the bouquet of dandelions Benjamin and Zoë kept adding to:

We parked the car and walked to the park and then my mom realized she probably should have brought her wallet with her instead of leaving it in the car so she and I walked back to the car to get her wallet and then walked back to the park. Alexander was so happy that we came back. He ran up to Naanii and gave her a long hug right in the middle of the sidewalk:

Don't mind Alexander's outfit. He's still wearing his emergency-outfit pants from his change during stake conference. He matched better in the morning.

Here's Zoë adding to Naanii's bouquet:

And here's Rachel walking slowly with Naanii and Alexander back to the van. Andrew had sent her running back to get Alexander and hurry him to the van, but he would not be rushed. He wanted to walk with Naanii and that was that.

And here's Benjamin striking a pose on a stump (one of his favourite pastimes):

After exhausting ourselves on the spinning wheel at the first park, we headed to what we call the "spider park" to play some more. Alexander made Naanii follow him all around (and told her probably 100 times that he is Daniel Tiger). Here they are going down the slide together:

 

Here are Miriam, Rachel, Andrew, and Benjamin resting on a hammock/rope bridge:

Here's Miriam worming her way through the rings of this ladder:

And here's Rachel attempting to pull off the same feat:

 Zoë got super staticky on the slides:

And we finished up our visit with a lovely stroll around the pond. Here's Daddy dripping in children:

(There aren't many pictures of Benjamin because he, unfortunately, was feeling rather sulky. He was thirsty and tired, I think (I think that because we all were, but he was letting it get the best of him (which happens to the best of us at times))).