Father's Day Fun

A few weeks ago I celebrated my first father's day with Ben and Jill.  We had a lot of fun celebrating all weekend, but Ben and I also got to spend some quality time together at the park.  Ben just loves dogs - little dogs, big dogs, loud barking dogs, licking dogs, it doesn't matter - he loves them all.   So I thought I would take him over to the dog park so he could enjoy watching the packs of dogs run around.  He was absolutely mesmerized watching all those dogs run around the park.  A number of them came right up to Ben to give him a lick or two and to let him pet them.  A few of these dogs were pretty big - big enough to put a saddle on them and let Ben ride them around, and I thought that he would be intimidated by them.  But to my surprise - he was fine with them all.  The only time he got upset was when they woudn't come close enough to let him pet them.  Unfortunately I left the camera in the car, so I don't have any pictures of him with the dogs, but afterwards we walked over to the play ground and played there.  (Yes, I remembered the camera this time.) 

It had been a while since Ben was on a big swing... and he loved it.

A woman was pushing her son next to us and she was watching me take a zillion pictures of Ben as I pushed him on the swing, so she nicely asked if I wanted to be in a picture with Ben.  Sure!!   Although, Ben wasn't too sure about it...   "Who is this woman taking our picture?"

A minute later, he was back to giggling and smiling again.

Next up was the slide...  and it was a BIG slide, not like the little one we have in our backyard..   But that didn't stop Ben.  Skip the stairs, his goal was to climb right up the front of that slide!

Wow, this sliide is a little high...maybe that's far enough.  Let's slide!!

Slides are exhausting after a while...

So its time to move on to the next play area.  That rock climbing wall looks interesting...  Let's climb it!

In case you haven't figured it out, I cut my arm holding Ben out of this picture.  He's not actually climbing the wall here, but I think he thought he was.

All this playing is wearing us both out, so we took a break and sat in the grass and had some snacks, played with sticks and picked clovers as we watched the other kids play.

What a fun time we had at the park.  We headed home after all this playing so we could take a much needed bath, but on the way home we ended our bonding time the best way possible....

We shared a McDonalds vanilla shake!

Yummy Yummy!!