Settlers Park

Mike is still loving his new job. The company Mike works for sells playground equipment to parks and schools. It's his job to talk to installers, maintenance crews, and equipment buyers and sellers. On Wednesday, a maintenance crew had to be sent out to Settlers Park here in Meridian and Mike had to be there to represent the company. He was so impressed with the park that we decided to take the kids the next day. We invited Hyrum's friend Emily from his Sunbeams class and her mom to come along with us. I had never seen the park before and was amazed at how large and how nice it was. The park isn't quite finished yet and has several coming attractions such as climbing rocks, a fishing pond, splash pad, sand pit, 23 acres for 8 youth baseball fields, and a bunch of other plans I don't remember in the making. I mean, this park is HUGE!! They even put up a large screen and show movies one night a week.

The kids had a lot of fun! We started at the regular playground which they call Adventure Island. It's basically several yards worth of jungle gym equipment. Hyrum and Emily especially enjoyed the slides. Hyrum liked the bigger slides, but Emily got a little scared. We hit the swings afterwards, but again, Emily was afraid to swing, so she just pushed her mom and Hyrum.

Before too long, we ditched the standard playground equipment for the main attraction and the biggest reason we had come. Water Odyssey! It's like running through the sprinklers, but better!! They had all sorts of different types of sprayer including water cannons you can aim at your friends and a pirate ship's mast that fills up with water and tips to dump sheets of water on those standing beneath it. Here are a bunch of pictures.

An unsuspecting Hyrum pokes his finger in a pressure release sprayer...

... and gets his first drenching of the day!

Mike apparantly thought that Hyrum wasn't already wet enough. He wanted to really soak him, but decided that the "Dumping Buccaneer" was a bit too much water for such a little boy.

So he lined him up under a smaller version... Miss!

After watching all that water splash down, I was surprised that Hyrum was gullible enough to let his dad reposition him once more for a direct hit. It scared him pretty badly at first, but after a few seconds of panic and a hug from his dad, he decided it was pretty funny.

After getting hit with that final bucket full, Hyrum was cold and wet and tired and we headed home. But we had a lot of fun and it was all free! We'll definitely be going back!