Your Royal Blogstress: The Sprayground

Ah, it's summer (almost). Well, it feels like summer anyway. Nicholas is out of school for the year, and I am proud to say, did quite well in Jr. Kindergarten. We had a little time in between school and our annual trek to Scotland, so I tried to pack in as many playdates as possible in the time before we leave.

Today's playdate was with Nicholas' Bestie, Andrew. We started out early, and met up at a local park. This place is approximately a 1 minute drive from my house ( we would have walked the 15 minutes but I woke Rhys up at 8:45 to meet our friends at 9:00) and is one of the reasons I love living in our little community. My husband dogs me a good deal for living in the suburbs. Every chance he gets to bemoan the fact that we live in the Commonwealth, have a flat roof and can't control our AC, believe me he DOES. But he can grumble and harrumph all the wants because where else can you find a place like this:

It is a small, uncrowded park that contains all of the following: a volleyball court, a basketball court that backs up to a tennis court with a tennis wall. There is also a playground and a fountain built for the specific purpose of kids running through it. My friend called it The Sprayground. I love it!

I am obviously a big picture taker.
Sometimes I think I've taken too many of Nick,
because he at times appears to HATE having his photo taken.
My tactic is to have the boys make funny faces.
Which generally leads to lots and lots of laughter.

Uh oh, he's cracked a smile.

Then it all just sort of spills out slowly,

then erupts into the sweetest,

silliest laughter.

Goofballs!

Andrew, one can only assume, isn't tortured by the camera the way Nicholas is, so he actually lets me take some sweet photos of him. He is quite cute and photogenic. A wonderful subject to shoot.

The boys started off in the sand at the volleyball court.

(This photo also serves the purpose of proving to the daddies that we in fact did apply copious amounts of sunscreen to the kids. And if you know either of our husbands, they are one in the same on this front. And this is a joke, but not really.)

Cuteness

And Rhys is ever the charmer and super-adorbs.

Lyndon was a hard cookie to crack on the whole smiling front.
He was probably wondering why this strange lady
with this weird object in front of her face kept trying to get him to smile.
This is a legit point, Lyndon,
but I don't give up so easily.

I'm pretty sure this was Rhys' first sand experience.
He loved putting the sand in the back of the dump truck.

Nope, still not smiling.

And in the bigger one! So cool!

The Bigs and the Littles playing together.

One of the most endearing things Nicholas has said was a while back. He was talking to Rhys before a playdate at Andrew's house explaining that he (Nicholas) was going to play with his best friend, Andrew,
and that Rhys was going to play with his best friend, Lyndon.
There is just something so innocent and sweet about the fact that Nick naturally
assumes that Rhys and Lyndon will be best friends, too.

Time for the Sprayground

Andrew was brave a jumped right in.
The water was a little chilly.

But seeing what a good time Andrew was having...

Nick decides to dash on through.

See Rhys?

Rhys was skeptical.

The big boys have a blast.

No, I'm good from over here.

Let's sing a silly song.

And do a goofy dance.

AH HA!

I gotcha!

Cute smile!

And Little Brother is still not impressed.
And let's us all know...
VERY LOUDLY.

Everyone was getting hot, cranky and hungry. We put on dry clothes. We have something to drink and eat, and Nick has one last burst of energy and busts out with this: