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.

 

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.

 

The Cat in the Hat at the Arden Theatre

During our decade of living in Argyll, Scotland, one of the things Mr Pict and I missed was easy access to the theatre.  Previous to moving to Argyll, we had lived on the outskirts of London so had been utterly spoiled with having so many marvellous theatres and theatre companies in the vicinity.  Furthermore, as a High School English teacher, I had organised dozens of trips to see productions at both the school’s local theatre and into London. To then find ourselves about 80 miles from a professional theatre was a wee bit of a culture shock.  We missed it.  We made do with taking our kids to see amateur performances (which were often good quality) and going to the theatre when staying with family.  Therefore, one of the pros of moving to the suburbs of a major city was ready access to cultural events, including stage shows and plays.

As such, when the opportunity arose for us to visit the theatre this weekend, we jumped at the chance to kick-off our return to theatre-going.  The show was an adaptation of Dr Suess’ ‘The Cat in the Hat’ at the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia.  The older boys thought they might be too old to enjoy it but we sold it to them as being like going to a pantomime at Christmas and that won them over.  The theatre itself is a really nice open space and the arena we were visiting was certainly comfortable with good views of the stage throughout – none of those annoying pillars to peer around or cramped leg room that I have experienced in Victorian theatres.

What was great about the production was that it remained faithful to the text.  I wondered if they would be tempted to borrow from ‘The Cat in the Hat Comes Back’ to bulk out the lines but, no, they stayed true to the original words.  What bulked it out instead was lots of wonderful, physical performance.  Each of the five actors were very expressive facially and with gesture and there was a great deal of physical comedy and skilful use of props on show.  There was a long (perhaps too long for the youngest audience members) first section demonstrating the boredom that the boy and Sally were experiencing that was almost wordless.  My four sons were captivated from the get go – even my older cynical ones – and there was lots of laughter and mirth from them throughout the performance.  The Cat in particular was mesmerising and had my kids spellbound.  Things 1 and 2 were also hilarious.  There were also some marvellous moments of unscripted audience interaction which had us all in peals of laughter.  Comedy serendipity.  It was a really well-crafted, skilfully performed, imaginative and engaging dramatic rendering of an adored book.  We all thoroughly enjoyed it and were very impressed.

After the performance, the five actors remained on stage to have a Q&A with the audience which I thought was a lovely tough since it provided the kids with the opportunity to learn more about stagecraft.  The cast then posed for photos and chatted with the audience some more outside the auditorium.  Here are three of the Pict kids with the Cat in the Hat – the oldest one didn’t want to be in the snap.

We then stopped off for some post-theatre ice cream treats for the kids.  I think this is something they will want to turn into a tradition.  The 5 year old got so messy with melted chocolate ice cream (far worse than when I snapped the photo) that he became a bit of a tourist attraction with people stopping to chat to us through fits of giggles.

We had a wonderful time at the Arden Theatre and will definitely go back and enjoy more family productions there.  Now that we are becoming more settled here in Pennsylvania, we will also have to investigate the other theatres in the area and sample their child-friendly productions.