Luisen Park

 

Labor Day weekend we decided to hang out here and with a forecast of really great weather we decided to fill the long weekend full of fun outings and day trips from home.  Friday afternoon we took off to explore Luisen Park, in Mannheim, about a half hour away from us.  We did lots of strolling through the park, found some great playgrounds to play on, stopped to run around the fountain, played giant chess, fed some disgusting fish, played soccer, watched the little kids on the cars and enjoyed a picnic dinner.

 

 

Happy Matthew in the front of the stroller.     Luke deemed himself official cooler puller.  He literally freaked out if anyone else tried to have a turn.  It was pretty heavy too… but he could totally handle it.

Luke started out driving by himself but couldn’t keep the heavy pedal down so the German attendant gestured for Chris to help him out. That’s a bottle of Welch’s grape soda Chris is holding which has been a new family favorite for BBQ’s and fun picnics.  On this night, all the kids wanted to ‘save’ theirs so they could be the last one drinking it and got so busy playing they never even got around to drinking it.  They pleaded to have it with breakfast the next morning and I totally let them.

Again, we found great playgrounds to play on. The four oldest played forever on this big wooden house looking play thing.  Inside you could move the wooden slats anyway you wanted to BUILD your own play set.  They build different platforms and stairways.  We had to DRAG them away and they are very anxious to go back.  

That slide was SO fast.  Matthew  L O V E S slides but this little corner right here flipped him over on his tummy and it scared him.  Watch out for German playground equipment… too fun! 

We thought we’d have enough time for a boat ride after dinner but we stayed too long at the playground.  While walking by the lake, though, we noticed some ducks and decided to throw out extra bread crusts to them.  Emerging from nowhere these big fish came up trying to gobble up the bread.  They opened their mouths wide and waited for the next piece.  They were absolutely disgusting but we still kept feeding them just to watch them open their gross mouths.  Yuck.

On the way out of the park we saw this sign… “Only look, not feed!”    Oooops.

Ryan has a soccer ball with him all the time these days.

Chris and Ryan played Chess and Matthew wanted to play too.  He kept picking up random pieces and moving them around.  It added another level of challenge to the boys game.