Exploring our new area

For the first time in many, many years we have had a full weekend together at home - Saturday and Sunday off! When he was working at Alaska Airlines, David's schedule gave him Mondays & Tuesdays off and working from 4pm to 1:30am - with me working the weekdays so we were like two ships that passed in the night. We had a few random weekends off together when David paid other people to work his shifts so we could fly down for a visit to California, but this weekend was our first real, unplanned weekend off together we've probably had since about a year and a half. It was AWESOME!! I worked a full day on Friday and Lochie (still recovering from his frenectomy) fell asleep really early around 6:30pm - so David and I went out in our new backyard and played lawn darts with a set we got him for Fathers Day! It was so nice just to spend time together alone (something we'd almost forgotten!) and he beat me 6-2 (grr - rematch!). He only won because he had the "lucky" orange darts though and I had the puke green coloured darts which jinxed me! On Saturday we continued to unpack moving boxes - but it was fun to have so much storage space to decide where to put everything! And, in Lochie's words, we spent a lot of time "brr-laxing". Lochie who is still forbidden from jumping on the trampoline or running around too much spent a lazy Saturday morning befriending all of the worms in the yard. He spent hours both yesterday and today gathering, naming and talking to his new "friends". After lunch we took a drive around our new town of Meridian and came across a small local festival called Meridian Dairy Days. We wandered around looking at different booths set up and Lochie had his face painted and got some free candy, but it was near the closing of the festival and there wasn't much action going on there so we drove into Boise around our old haunt (shudder) and visited the Bench Commission to see if we could find a cheap but nice second-hand desk - no luck, better deals on Craigslist I reckon. After that we drove back to Meridian and took a photo of an old barn which is on the corner of Ustick & Linder right near our new subdivision. I drive past this cool old barn every day and wanted a snapshot of it because it looks like one big gust of wind would send it over! We had driven past this huge, cool baseball complex on Ustick and Meridian Rd a few times and had noticed from a distance there looked like a lot of activity and families at this playground with a jungle gym that looked like a pirate ship so we decided to inspect closer - it turned out to be a cool park called Settlers Park which has a fishing pond, concession building, a huge playground, and the "pirate ship" turned out to be a cute free mini-water park for kids! It was so awesome and Lochie's eyes bugged out when he saw it so of course it was hard to say no to him. He was supposed to take it easy still a bit because he still has the sutures from his frenectomy but we figured it wasn't like he was going down waterslides or splashing around in a pool or anything so we let him go play in the water in his clothes and he loved it! It had a whale with a squirting spout and a pirate ship mast that filled up and splashed all over the kids standing under it when it became heavy with water. It also had many other small sprinklers and sprays and the flooring was a soft textured cushioned foam material with a pebbletex like non-slip grip. It is only a few blocks from our house so I can tell Settlers Park is going to be our new favourite hang-out this Summer! Also, there are two new features going in that look to open soon - one David & I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be - the other looked like a music park as it had an array of chimes, drums with tethered drumsticks etc and music pipes etc so that will be really fun for him as well! We plan to have a barbeque on Sunday afternoon and continue unpacking - and I'm challenging David to a lawn darts tournament and this time I'm playing with the lucky orange darts!
**Update** I saw our friend Brent at Winco tonight and he told me that Settlers Park hosts a free family movie night every Friday night throughout the Summer - last Friday night they showed Charlotte's Web. They set up a big outdoor movie screen apparently - we'll check it out next Friday night!**
Click here for more info on the Settlers Park Adventure Island Park