Nielsen's Grove Park

Saturday evening we packed Tay in the car and headed up to Orem to visit Nielsen's Grove Park. I was there with Taylor last week for a ward playgroup and wanted Sean to see it too. It's a really amazing park with lots of grass, a playground, duck pond, and two large shallow fountains for kids to play in.

We started our adventure at the playground, where Tay Tay was so excited to see the swings and HUGE slide that he almost kicked himself right out of my arms. His favorite part was climbing the gazillions of steps up to the top of the slide and then zooming down with Mommy. There weren't many people there, so I let him climb up at his own pace and I think he felt like a big boy.



Next up were the swings, where he seemed less than amused until I did the trick my dad always did with us when we were kids - stand in front of him and jump out of the way at the last minute as he swings forward. As soon as I started doing that he was squealing and kicking his legs so much Sean and I could hardly contain our laughter. I know these pictures of him are blurry, but they're cute anyway.


After the playground it was on to the duck pond where Taylor was entertained by the three ducks for approximately 30 seconds. I couldn't stop taking pictures of him with Daddy though because I just can't believe how big he's gotten since last year, but that's another post...

The last stop on our excursion was the wading fountain (Disclaimer: there are actually signs all over the fountains that say not to wade or swim because the water is untreated. Look at me being the responsible parent). At first we just kept Taylor in his regular clothes because I was sure that - like a few days prior - he wouldn't want to get anything more than his feet wet. Well apparently he was feeling much more adventurous this time around because he all but dove into the water fully dressed. We had to pull him out of the fountain kicking and screaming to change him into his swim diaper, and once he was allowed back in he was crawling all over the place. He splashed as hard as he could, and even when he got water in his face he'd just laugh and keep splashing. It was seriously the cutest thing I've ever seen. Really.

The hard thing was that he wanted so badly to play with the other kids in the fountain (I'm not the only irresponsible parent in Utah County apparently), but they were much older and wanted nothing to do with him. He had fun anyway, and we had fun watching him and taking tons and tons of pictures.

Here's a cute video I took too:



It was a really fun family outing and I'm so glad we went!