Doylestown Kids’ Castle

I have mentioned a few times before that there comes a point – frequently during the colder months – where cabin fever hits my kids, they start acting like wee caged beasts, and they desperately need to burn off their excess energy.  With that in mind, this weekend we took them to Doylestown.

 

The Central Park in Doylestown has a superb playground known as Kids’ Castle that provides lots of opportunities for climbing, balancing, sliding, and swinging in a safe and clean environment.  This was not our first visit to the Kids’ Castle playground but it has been a good while since we were last there.  The playground is a community funded project and, as such, it was encouraging to see that changes and developments have been made since we were last there.  It is great to see such signs of success for a community project.

My boys had a whale of a time clambering inside the many layers of the castle, shouting greetings from the tallest turrets, whizzing down the tube slides.  They also spent some time on the swings, including a tire swing that made them queasy.  What they were most enamoured by on this visit, however, were the pieces of equipment that were new to them.  There was a large piece of play equipment in the shape of a pirate ship, complete with a sea serpent slide, scramble nets, and canons that made a “boom” when whacked.  My three younger boys had soon turned it into the scene of an imaginative game I think loosely on the theme of piratical vikings – if that isn’t a tautology.

They also loved a new addition to the castle, a kind of hydraulic fireman’s pole with a platform.  They could step from the castle onto the platform and it would slowly descend and deliver them to ground level.  The younger three could not get enough of this.  They thought it was brilliant fun.  My oldest son – almost 13 – was confounded by what they could possibly find so entertaining about slowly descending from one level to another.  I had no sooner told him that it was because he was getting older than his almost 41 year old father hopped on the pole and had a go himself.  I guess it isn’t age related after all.

After the older three were tiring, the 6 year old still had energy galore to spare.  He wanted to go and look at the outdoor gym equipment so he and I headed off there to see what the equipment did, what exercises could be done, what if anything he could do there to burn off more energy.  I imagine the gym equipment is a great resource for people who enjoy that type of thing.  There were clear instructions regarding how to use the equipment in different ways.  The youngest and I did some of the exercises but mostly he just ran and jumped and climbed until finally his energy levels dropped to a reasonable level.

 

Ridley Creek State Park

Happy New Year!

My first post of 2016 is about our final Pict family outing of 2015 when we went for an exploration of Ridley Creek State Park.  Located near Media, the park comprises over 2000 acres of land but we confined this first visit to one particular trail.  We had visited the adjacent Tyler Arboretum in April and I must admit that I was bracing myself for similar levels of moodiness from the four boys.  However, the opportunity to roam free, climb trees, battle with sticks, and generally be their feral little selves meant they were stunningly well behaved and agreeable throughout the trek.

We parked up by the Jefford Mansion, a beautiful stone built building from the early twentieth century which now serves as the park offices, and the kids immediately scurried off into what was a cross between an artificial grove and a portico of trees surrounding a formal fish pond.  They soon had it turned into an imaginative playground where heroes were doing battle with mythological monsters, twigs brandished, roaring, and racing around.

From there, we ventured into the woods.  The ground was still sodden and boggy from the previous night’s deluge of rain but we all squelched along quite happily.  There were lots of good climbing trees which the boys were soon scaling and even better were lots of felled trunks that they could shimmy along.  It soon became a competition to see who could complete an obstacle course of tree trunk running in the quickest time.  The smallest Pict is nimble, fleet of foot, and quite frankly impulsive and reckless so he easily won each and every time.

It was because of the 6 year old’s intrepid ways that we stumbled across the highlight of the trip.  We were veering off the demarcated path anyway in order to run along logs but the wee one plunged off into the woods even further and, in doing so, chanced upon the skeletal remains of an adult white tail deer. Well, you would think my boys had just discovered pirate treasure!  They have inherited my macabre fascination for decay and mortality so the fault / credit is almost entirely my own but it seems my children are rarely happier on an outdoor adventure than when they stumble across a corpse.  The body parts were spread across the clearing so they had fun trying to find all the different parts, like a slightly gross jigsaw puzzle.  The skull was the easiest fine after the spine and rib cage but the two middle boys literally jumped up and down with glee when they found the two parts of the mandible.  Each hoof was located and identified at which point my youngest son declared that the deer must be a lady because it had high heels.

Animal autopsy over, we kept on with the looping track.  We found interesting fungi, including a lump of gelatinous brown slime, like a tree hugging sea anemone, but we did not spot any more wildlife, either live or dead.  Wandering through the woods with four loud children never presents the best opportunity for spotting critters but perhaps there was not much to encounter at this time of year anyway.  I will just tell myself that.  It is a lovely park so we will have to return in the Spring when the flora and fauna are bursting with new life once more and perhaps we can explore another trail.

Flea Market and Kids’ Castle

We, as a family, love second-hand stuff.  I am frugal and budget-conscious so obviously the financial element of buying second-hand wares appeals to me.  I am also environmentally aware so I do like to think that in using something old instead of buying something new I am saving something from landfill and thus reducing my carbon footprint.  However, the real delight comes from the thrill of the unknown, the never knowing quite what you might happen across in all that rummaging, the hope of finding a buried treasure (within one’s own context of treasure, of course).  As a teenager, I would buy a lot of my clothes from charity shops not only because I was budget savvy but also because I didn’t want to have the same style as everyone else so buying vintage helped me maintain my non-conformity.  I still feel that way now as it is nice to have odds and sods around the house that, even if they were mass-produced once upon a time, are now that little bit more unusual.

Like mother, like sons.  My four boys also love a good rake through second-hand items whether at a jumble sale, a charity shop or car boot sale.  When the children and I were living with my in-laws prior to departing for America, one of the boys’ treats for a day out was to walk into the city centre and have some money to spend in the charity shops there.  They were enormously excited to do so.  There was a big car boot sale held in an old airfield near where my brother-in-law lives in England that my kids also loved to go to.  The scale of this boot sale was massive.  It was so big that my kids could actually draw up a shopping list of things they hoped to find and, for the most part, they would be successful.  I should explain, perhaps, that a car boot sale is an event whereby people bring the things they want to sell to a location and they set up their tables and goods in front of the open boots (trunks) of their cars.  Didn’t want that to be lost in translation.  These boot sales always kick off really early in the morning, before the crack of dawn, and you want to be sure you are there early otherwise the dealers have gone through the place like locusts and harvested all the very best stuff.  Now I have a mob of kids who I cannot prise out of bed in the morning without threats.  I actually need to invent a giant shoe horn that assists me in levering them out of bed.  Even on Christmas morning, with all the anticipation of a visit from Santa having occurred, Mr Pict and I have to wake them up.  It’s ridiculous.  I definitely need that giant shoe horn before they become teenagers.  There have been two exceptions to their bed-limpet ways.  The first was the morning we were getting on the plane to come to America.  A whispered reminder that this was the day they would see Daddy again had them each pinging out of bed like Dracula from his coffin.  The other exception was any time we were going to a car boot sale with their Uncle.  Even on cold, dark winter mornings, they would leap out of bed, get dressed and ready, wrap themselves up in gloves, hats and scarves and off we would set in the car ready to go pillage some stalls and turn one person’s tat into our treasure.

You will now understand, therefore, that we are excited by the arrival of yard sale and flea market season.  We have not yet been to a yard sale.  I think I would find a single family yard sale a bit awkward – a bit like those posh shops you accidentally wander into where the hawk-eyed staff outnumber the customers by six to one – but we will certainly hit up some multi-family, street-wide yard sales.  Saturday, however, was our first Flea Market of the season.

In addition to looking for things we might need or want, the kids and I set ourselves a challenge to (quietly and tactfully) identify the most hideous, most awful item on sale at any car boot sale.  We have found some incredible winners in the past from grotesque dolls to skid-marked underwear to a “pre-loved” item consenting adults really ought to be keeping in private and locked away.  Really.  Thankfully the kids didn’t identify that one.  Judder.  Saturday’s ugliest item was quite tame by comparison, some sort of wooden carving of a troll.  Ugly but not requiring hand-sanitiser.  We also look for a theme each time.  Often the theme ends up being Tigger or Pooh.  There must be a warehouse somewhere just stuffed to the gunnels with Winnie the Pooh themed stuff that people collect just to sell second-hand.  The theme of Saturday’s Flea Market was definitely Beanie Babies.  Every second stall had a collection of Beanie Babies for sale.  This very much appealed to my seven year old who absolutely loves cuddly toys.  One lady was selling her collection for $2 each but told him she would give him a manager’s special of 2 for a dollar.  So he bought four. He also bought a boglin (remember those toys?) and a hat so he could perfect his Michael Jackson dance moves (the Wii has a lot to answer for).  My eleven year old bought a cuddly rockhopper penguin because he loves penguins.  The other boys just bought random things that took their fancy, from superhero figures to a hula hoop.  One stall holder even gave them a free Scalextric set.  Mr Pict bought a large metal shovel (for the snow, not to rid himself of his troublesome wife), a leaf blower and a vintage captain’s chair.  I can attest to the comfort of the latter because I am sitting on it right now.

After all of that raking and bargaining and shopping, we decided to take the boys to burn some energy off somewhere new.  We, therefore, headed to Doylestown where we had heard there was a large castle themed playground.  It was indeed a very cool playground, with a multi-storey central castle with various slides, chutes and tunnels, and surrounding play equipment.  My eleven year old found he was verging on being too tall to properly play inside the castle as he was having to crouch down too far which slowed him down.  His three wee brothers, however, gallivanted around for hours playing a game about knights defeating a dragon.  The design of the playpark meant that Mr Pict, our oldest son and I could sit back in the sun and let them run around to their hearts’ content.  They were careering down various slides, clambering up steps and jumping across “lava” bridges and all with minimal supervision, which was great because I loathe having to hover over them as it feels inhibiting.  It was a scorcher of a day so we could not stay too long but we will definitely return over the summer to play there again.

And, yes, I had a quick run around in the castle too and exited out of the curvy tube slide.  Just for research photo-documenting, of course.

 

A Memorial Day Weekend Birthday

Memorial Day was one of those American holidays I had heard of but really knew nothing about.  I knew it vaguely marked the beginning of Summer and that was it, the sum total of my knowledge.  It turns out that it echos Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day in Britain, a time for the nation to pause and remember the dead of their wars.  I guess I did not twig that because it is marked in May rather than in November.  I am culturally hard-wired to associate such commemorations with slate grey skies, sombre colours and drizzling rain.  Originally called Decoration Day, the traditions of the holiday apparently emerged during the Civil War with family visiting war graves and memorials to remember their lost loved ones and gradually evolved into a three day weekend that has been co-opted to somehow celebrate the beginning of summer at the same time as being a solemn reflection.  That is quite an odd combination.

Memorial Day happened to fall this year on the youngest Pict’s fifth birthday so we were obviously celebrating and being festive.  We, therefore, did not attend any parades or commemoration services as the juxtaposition would have been confusing and possibly a bit distasteful.

Our celebration of the mini-Pict turning five began on Sunday with a trip to Elmwood Park Zoo, an animal park not too far from home base.  Our first stop was to see the eagles.  The boys have seen eagles in flight but it was good for them to see the scale, the bulk and power, of these birds close up.  They were also amused to see one eagle walking in a way I can only describe as a gawky sashay – definitely much less graceful than when in flight.  Then we went to see some “snowbird” giraffes who live in Florida but some to Pennsylvania in the summer.  Does Florida really get too uncomfortably hot for African mammals in the summer?  A viewing platform allowed us to get pretty close to the giraffes.  The kids enjoyed seeing one perform the splits in order to drink and to get close enough to its head to see it’s long purple-blue tongue.

We saw a snoozing fox, lazing bighorn sheep, dozing wolves and – right at the very back of its enclosure – a slumbering cougar that rolled over from its back to its belly just like a moggy cat.  Clearly it was a tad hot for the animals as many more – such as the bobcats – were completely idle.  I guess I too would probably be prone to laziness if I was cooped up on a baking hot day.

The indoor animals were, therefore, much more active.  The boys loved seeing the alligator roaming around in its tank.  She had her snout pressed against the glass for a while and when she clambered out of the water they were able to see her impressive claws and powerful legs.  There were also lots of writhing snakes and swimming turtles.  One enclosure housed some iguanas, a funky South American porcupine and a pair of Golden Lion Tamarins.  My oldest son found the latter to be captivating and swiftly became engrossed in watching them groom each other.  I have to agree that they do have such gorgeous little faces.

The boys fed sheep and goats in the petting barn, watched bison urinate in impressive quantities, stared burrowing owls in the eye, watched some capybara faeces give new meaning to the game of “Pooh sticks”, witnessed a jaguar being spoon fed, watched one turtle hustle another off a rock and felt the pelt of a coyote.  They also had a blast playing in the playgrounds around the park.  All in all it was a fun day out, relaxing and laid back.

Memorial Day itself was the birthday – his fifth birthday but his first ever birthday in America.  This was the first year when the littlest one has had mounting excitement and anticipation building to a head of steam in advance of his birthday.  In a victory for his numeracy skills, he had been counting down the sleeps until his birthday.  He was almost combusting, therefore, when I woke up and saw all of his presents and cards on the coffee table.  He was over the moon with each card he opened and with each gift he unwrapped.

We then went for a play in the school playground.

Then, because it was a glorious scorcher of a day, we had a barbecue for dinner – or “barbecube” as the now five year old calls it.

And, of course, special cake for dessert.

 

And so a great long weekend of family fun was enjoyed by one and all. 

And now only one Pict has yet to experience a birthday in America.

 

Slasher Movies at French Creek State Park

Saturday was a wonderful weather day here.  After weeks of snow, chill winds, gloomy skies and general dreariness, Saturday was a proper Spring day full of blue skies, sunshine and warmth.  It was, therefore, the perfect day for a family outing.  We used to spend a lot of our time in Scotland wandering in woodland or circuiting lochs or travelling through glens and now we are eager to explore the great outdoors in Pennsylvania.

We decided to go to French Creek State Park, which is near Elverson.  We stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel – because my boys have still not tired of American breakfast experiences – and while there my kids bought one of those toy knives where the blade disappears into the hilt on contact.  This gave them the idea to film a slasher movie on Mr Pict’s iphone.  They spent the rest of the car journey storyboarding it and discussing special effects and casting character parts.

I should state, categorically and for the record, that my kids have never seen a slasher movie.  They have, however, picked up some elements of the genre from parodies in cartoons that they watch and from looking at the images on DVD boxes.  The fact they were able to piece together a narrative based on that paucity of information and experience testifies to how cliched such movies are.  Still fun though.

Hopewell Lake, near the centre of the Park and where we parked the car, was still partially frozen so the boys had fun poking sticks at the ice and watching bubbles move beneath the surface.

We decided to trek the Boone Trail, a six mile meandering walk through the woodland.  It was slow going as the kids kept stopping to film scenes for their movie – much to the bemusement of passers by on the trail – but it was a glorious day for a wander so we did not mind.  They did three takes maximum per scene which is not bad going for guerilla film-making.

 

One area they loved playing in was a leaf strewn gulch over which a large tree trunk had fallen.  They, therefore, scrambled back and forth across the log, at first on hands and knees and eventually scampering across on two feet.  It was a bright but shady spot for a stop and a glug from our water bottles too.

Just a few paces further along the trail we came across some cabins.  Cabins in the woods.  This was a little film maker’s dream location!  The boys had a whale of a time filming creepy thriller scenes in one cabin while I wandered around trying to look for local fauna.  At one point we did see a chipmunk and we saw a fair few birds but the sounds of kids making a thriller don’t exactly induce critters to malinger in the area.

 

Once they had exhausted that location’s possibilities, we trekked onwards through the woods.  It soon became apparent that we were moving at far too slow a pace – what with all the filming fun and games – to complete the entire circuit of the Boone Trail so we decided to walk as far as the Fire Tower and then head back down towards “base camp” once more.

We were wandering in the woods for over five hours and barely covered any ground in the Park.  It was a great place for a family trek as there was plenty to see and do along the trail to break up the monotony of walking in woods for the kids.  We will definitely return to French Creek State Park time and time again to explore the Boone Trail further and have a wander along other pathways too, especially as the seasons change and the trees fill in.

My kids continued their movie making when they got home and now have lofty ambitions of editing the whole movie together complete with post-production digital effects, a soundtrack, sound effects and a 1970s style set of opening credits.  They have appointed me chief editor.  Good grief.  I better start looking up tutorials on YouTube.

 

Nature Walk

We moved to Pennsylvania from a relatively remote area on the West coast of Scotland.  We were surrounded by nature.  We could stroll the banks of a loch, wander a forest trail, scale a hill or potter along the seashore.  A walk of a few minutes from home could have the kids playing in woodland and a short drive could have us lost in the landscape.  It was one of the things I loved best about living where we used to: all that access to nature, the fresh air, the space.

We are lucky that where we have ended up is pretty green.  We have swapped the red squirrels of “home” for grey squirrels who play in our garden – much to the delight of my 4 year old – and instead of rounding a corner of a single track road to find a large deer leering at me we now have a herd of deer who seem to hang out opposite Toys R Us.  We have also seen some lovely birds visited our garden, including a red-bellied woodpecker.  Nevertheless, we were missing our nature walks so we used the Thanksgiving weekend as an opportunity to explore a nearby state park.  

 

No sooner had we arrived than we saw some a couple of turkey vultures circling above us, using the thermals to drift higher and higher.  Some bird watchers thought one of them might be a bald eagle but I’m not going to claim I saw a bald eagle here until identification is certain.  We did, however, see a whole load of blue jays hopping from branch to branch as we walked along one pathway.  It was a mild and bright day so the sunlight was flashing off their sky blue feathers.

We found a playground in the middle of the walk so the boys could play.

 

 

 

 

The little Picts like nature when it is red in tooth and clue.  It’s not just a “circle of life” thing with them; they are actually quite fond of the macabre.  I will hold my hands up and admit this is my responsibility as a parent.  I got them hooked on watching animal autopsy documentaries and have encouraged them to study any dead animals we have encountered on our treks.  They still speak fondly of the time when we stumbled across an entire red deer skeleton, picked clean and bleached by the sun.  It’s science.  So the boys were all very excited when we came upon the rib cage, vertebrae and one leg of a deer.  It still had hide on one leg while the rib cage was entirely exposed.  My 6 year old wanted to take it home with us.  Eh… No.  I may have encouraged this fascination in my kids but I do draw the line somewhere.

 

We only wandered in a small proportion of the park land so we will definitely return there to explore some more and indeed we will visit more state parks as we venture out on weekends and holidays.

It felt good to wander among the trees again.