This is the first year since 2013 that we haven't experienced significant flooding after the winter thaw along the Grand River here. The 2013 flood was historic, one they labeled the one hundred year flood meaning it's only supposed to happen once every one hundred years but we've come relatively close a couple times and we've had quite a bit of flooding every year since except this year. In their short lives nature hikes through the flood waters had somewhat seemed like a rite of passage that brought in spring. This year it didn't play out that way so it's been a rather unexpected surprise that recent rains brought the levels up for their amusement though it came no where close to 2013 when I snapped this picture below a few days before the park was totally overcome with water. The playground in the background is the same one they are standing by in the picture above.
If there's two things kids love in life it's water and it's ability to make mud. Back when I was growing up there wasn't 24/7 cartoon network and keeping six kids occupied came at the sacrifice of giving us some old pie tins and sending us out to play in the water where we seem quite content to make mud pies. For my grand kids that kind of fun comes at the expense of delaying a project to level the side yard next to my house after half way through we discovered they filled in the empty lot where a house use to sit with sand. Now they have their own sand pit which they love to fill with water then run and jump in it. Jumping into a pit of mucky water seems rather unappealing as an adult but that old kid in me gets it, the dirtier the better. Now if that old kid could just find it to take them to an old stream we use to go when I was a kid and turn over a few rocks to find crabs we'd have a whole new adventure on our hands.
I get a lot of joy out of my youngest grandson, he's still at that curious stage and as long as he can be outside any excuse will suffice with his biggest one being helping grandma around the yard. Well at least until the curiosity has worn off then he's great for keeping the grass from growing underneath him or holding down the picnic table. I bought him lunch last week as he did such an excellent job of the latter, pulling weeds wasn't much in his repertoire. It stirs up to many spaskeeda's, which isn't a Italian dish with a Mexican twist it's just his way of pronouncing mosquitoes. Here he is planting some corn to grow his own corn stalks for Halloween in the middle of one of my flower beds not far from where grandma made him a makeshift raised flower bed to put some raggedy looking tomato plants his mom and him brought home from someplace.
They appear to be holding their own quite well which is good to know since my original plan before the sand pit put it on hold was to level the yard, build a giant planter like concept around the evergreens then a stepped down raised flower bed in front of the evergreens. This was my thoughts of placing a natural fence barrier between the neighbors house and mine but raising the evergreens was needed as I only wanted evergreen trees tall enough to block window to window views not tall enough to block sun to my yard and windows. The yard gets early a.m. sun as the sun rises and then it gets full sun in the afternoon as the sun shifts. I guess this works out better as it gives me a chance to see how it will all work out before going through with the whole project. The marigolds was an idea I got from 
I had my grandson throw in a sweet potato plant, some spinach and peppers to the experiment whereas he announced he wouldn't be eating any of those things because he didn't like them, I told him I'd take care of eating them for him...lol. I must say though from the looks of things so far there just may be one other person besides grandma with a green thumb in the family.
Other things we have been doing this year to keep us busy is going to an event in the park across the street that will be held every Tuesday to promote literacy to young kids sponsored by a collaborative group of people working with the Literacy Center of West Michigan.
They provide a variety of book choices according to grade level to any parent who brings their children out to enjoy the festivities which include a free book to each child, a weekly guest who reads a story to the kids and a treat or cook out for the kids....but, but, but where's the chicken nuggets?
Hey, what can I say, not every kid has a grandma who brings along the chicken nuggets. We ended up using a small grill I carry in the bottom of my picnic basket when all the grills where full at the park one day. I usually use it on those days I feel like escaping the world and find a desolate spot in a park to "get away from it all". The feet gave out a long time ago so I use rolled up foil to keep it off the ground. Relatively inexpensive I know to buy a new one but like I said, "on those days" meaning those days carrying some sort of emotional baggage, you know all that sentimental jive of being through a lot together...lol. That grate normally stands inside a pan bottom, I use it at picnics to keep food warm at family picnics but it works really great for keeping nuggets from falling down inside the grill. It works better than foil as it lifts the food up away from the coals better than foil does.
We've done our first outdoor arts and crafts project this year. Usually I reserve arts and crafts for winter time activities but my grand kids start missing doing arts and crafts. This craft consisted of taking part of a egg cartoon bottom and creating caterpillars out of them. After painting each kid had to find something to make their caterpillar appear fuzzy. How many clovers does it take to cover an egg cartoon half?....you don't want to know. This grandson is articulate at his crafts...he'd still been out there at midnight without some gathering help.
This one was pretty cool when he started out, he found some bushy, pointy flower stems but he's the minimal effort type kid. Once you said, "that's a pretty cool idea", one stem across the top would have been fine with him, it's like okay I came, I saw, I did, I am off.
This was the youngest's, a bit of color and few sprinkles of grass was doing it for him.
Below are the girls, they spent so much time trying to paint to perfection they sort of lost interest in the rest by the time they finished painting..and in one case detailing, the one that shows up white on the top is actually pink circles that the sun sort of bleached out of the picture.
That's been our list of summer fun so far in between rain and cooler temperatures. Last year before the HF resource credits shortened the amount of time available to post and comment for many on here I had taken photos of the various family activities and parks we go to through out the summer to make post about parks in our area. We try to mix things up a bit by choosing a different park as each has there own unique offerings for activities, limiting our major outings to a day during the holiday weekends allows us to pool our resources for maximum fun. Hopefully, as they say, hanging in between a wing and a prayer the next HF won't dampen the spirit to post.