St. Edwards State Park

Exploring new parks is one of the favorite activities in our house.  Last year, we visited St. Edwards State Park in Kirkland since I heard from a friend that it has an amazing playground.  We went there the whole family and things were going well for a while until Noah started to act out at the playground.  He was mad at other children who wanted to use the plaything he wanted to use.  It became almost impossible to stay since he was screaming, so we left hastily leaving the other three unsatisfied. 

So one sunny day in March, I took the three children back to the park.  It was a glorious day with bright sunshine and everyone in the Puget Sound was out and about enjoying the sun.  That made the traffic and parking situation difficult, but we all need to make some much needed Vitamin D.  Seattleites naturally crave sunshine since it's way better than taking VitaD supplement. :-)

The park has a huge castle like play structures with multiple slides and hidden ladders.  It's fun to play hide and seek there since there are many little hiding places.  We played hide and seek together and with the huge crowd of children out there, it was more like "Where are Campbell kids?" game.  We had a good time.  I just wish we can come to parks like this with the whole family.  It has been an issue with Noah for a good four years now.  He takes off without considering his own safety and throws a huge tantrum when his stimuli gets overloaded.  When the weather is sunnier again, we can take him to a playground at a nearby elementary school.  School playgrounds on weekend are a good place to take him since it's practically empty and it has a huge area to run around.  Mike will usually watch the other three and I focus on Noah.  It takes one adult to make sure he stays safe outside.

We ended the day with a snack at Crossroads.  It was so fun that Alyson wrote about the day on her writing test and she received a high score.  As the weather gets warmer, I am sure we'll have many more outing like this.  Bring out the sun! (It was a drizzly day all day today...)