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Wooden posts are us

“We’ve been surprised by wooden posts before,” Mommy points out as we climb out of the car to check out the splash pad at Gerald Poulin Park.

At the time, I accepted that comment at face value, but now that I’m writing about our adventure, I’m not so sure.

Sure, there have been times when we thought a splash pad would be a wooden post because it was in an older neighbourhood, and then were pleasantly surprised when we got there to discover a modern urban water park. (The four bandaid incident at Glen Park is an example of this.) read more

Froggy and Hippo

It’s kinda funny. Of the three splash pads we hopped around on Sunday, we all chose a different splash pad as our favourite.

  • Mommy liked Owl Park for the novelty factor. (It’s the first blue “pond” that we’ve seen.)
  • Our little girl liked the second splash pad at McCarthy Park the best.
  • And, I liked the bigger splash pad at  Citiplace Park (and not just because our little girl was climbing up into the business end of the hippo play structure.)

“What did you like the best at McCarthy Park?” I ask the wee-one at the end of the day.

“The frog.”

The frog is pretty cool. They’ve turned your standard splash loop into the mouth of a frog. Combine that with a giant cattail that sprays mist into the air and you get pretty wet.

Mind you, today, we waited until the water had run out before we had fun jumping through the mouth and filling up our princess buckets. read more

Park Hoppin’

Park hopping on a Sunday is a nice thing to do.

We’re listening to the Laurie Berkner Band as we tackle three splash pads that we haven’t been to yet: Owl Park, McCarthy Park, and Citiplace Park.

The splash pad at Owl Park is old school, but still cool. It’s a giant shallow circle painted blue with rocks and bushes planted around the edges.

“It looks like ice,” says our three year old as she and I run across the splash pad. This time, there’s no dragging involved, so we won’t be needing any Dora band aids. read more

Buzz Buzz

It’s here, it’s here!

A special package arrived in the mail. It’s the Best of the Laurie Berkner Band CD that Mommy bought online from Chapters.

(She ordered it from the kiosk in store and it was $4.00 cheaper than going to the Chapter’s website online. Wierd. I don’t have the heart to tell her it was even cheaper to buy it on iTunes.)

We’re really into Laurie Berkner right now. We saw her advertised at the beginning of a Wiggles DVD and decided to check her out. Her flavour of kindie rock is strangely addictive. read more

Level up

Our friends had a birthday party for their little girl. (She just leveled up to 4 years old.)

The birthday girl wanted to celebrate at Vista Park and the splash pad here is pretty awesome!

  • They have 3 tall twisty posts that shower water from above or sprinkle water from the sides.
  • They have 4 spray loops, but unlike other parks, they’re arranged so it looks like a spiral
  • They have 3 water cannons to blast your friends
  • And, of course, they have a bunch of ground sprinklers that shoot up streams and fountains of water. Hard to predict if you’re a toddler which makes it all the more exciting.

Our little girl had a lot of fun playing with their little girl, trying to recreate the sand castles from our last splash pad adventure. We had fun fetching water in our new princess pail from the drinking fountain.

Between the delicious green heart shaped cake and running around blowing bubbles, we’re exhausted. read more

Sand castles and splash pads

We had a play date at the Queenswood Heights Centennial park splash pad with our friends.

Apparently, when you mix water from the splash pad with sand from the nearby playground, you can make sand castles.

Who knew.

(It’s only taken us 40 splash pads to figure that out.)

The water park at Queenswood Heights is very nice. There’s actually two separate splash pads separated by some shady trees and picnic tables.

The first splash pad is kinda set up like a runway.

  • First, you run through two ground sprinkers that send up a fountain into the air.
  • Then, you have to get past the people trying to spray you with the yellow water cannons.
  • Run past the two ground sprinklers that shoot up a jet stream of water.
  • And then you have to face the big boss: a giant tower dumping five containers of water below.

We didn’t really play at the second splash pad only meters away. read more