Wooosh

After the house-wide strep test this weekend (luckily I was the only one who "failed" with a positive result) and a healthy dose of antibiotics (again for yours truly) we took a long walk to Codornices Park. This is a great park that Taki and I stumbled on a few years ago when we were on one of our long, meandering walks through Berkeley (obviously this was pre-kids, since post-kids there isn't so much meandering going on.) Since the park is around 2.5 miles away it isn't on our regular park agenda, but they do have an awesome slide that is a hit with Nikos.

In fact, Taki took the kids to the same park last weekend when I was in bed sick and miserable - so we'll start out with some shots of the first visit.

Here's Nikos on the stairs to the giant slide.

The slide is made out of cement and kids usually go down on cardboard, but sometimes just in their clothes. I'll just state for the record that I am a teeny bit glad I wasn't there for his first time down the slide because last time we were there a kid came down so fast he ended up breaking his wrist or arm (I was too freaked out to look closely.) I guess when the kids use the waxed cardboard it gets all crazy fast. Luckily from these videos it looks like the recent rain had stripped the cement of the wax so it wasn't like the Olympic luge track.

Nikos inchwormes down the slide.



Next up face first to improve the speed (with Olive cameo at the end.)



Okay, back to this past weekend and our walk up to the park. On our way up we passed this elephant in someone's front yard - yes, you read that correctly. Remember, we DO live in Berkeley.


Nikos wasn't so sure about it at first, I think he was having flashbacks to the elephants that horrified him at the Rainforest Cafe in Florida last July. I finally convinced him that the elephant was in fact fake and made out of tires. We both touched his trunk (for proof of non-life) and then Nikos was convinced.

The house also had one of those black hard plastic drainage pipe things - Nikos quickly went over to touch that exclaiming "look Mama, I'm touching a snake!" I did not take a picture of this. Drainage snakes are obviously not as cool as tire elephants, at least in my book.

When we got to the park Nikos was super excited to get back on the slide. Olive and I waited at the bottom to watch him come down while Taki went up with him so he could slide down as well.

I am trying to get her used to her sunglasses before we head to Arizona in a few weeks. I think these lasted about two minutes on her face...

Nikos started out on his belly, without cardboard.








Too little to ride the slide solo, Olive enjoys the swings.