Park #9 - Miller Park

We were finally able to get to another park! This summer has been crazy as far as weather. We are hoping to be able to visit a few others before it gets too cold and we are stuck inside. Last Friday we visited Miller Park. This park has had some major rennovations the past year or two. I am happy to report that Bloomington Parks and Rec also made major updates to their site . Check out all the park info at http://www.cityblm.org/parks/VW-Systems/Map/map.htm
Miller Park is located at 1020 S Morris Ave. Miller Park hands down has the most things to see and do. It is 67 acres filled with 2 large park areas, sprayground, zoo, mini golf, war memorials, the pavillion, and lake with paddle boat rentals. It has some other anmenties too including concessions, drinking fountains, fishing, football, softball/baseball fields, grills, picnic tables, lots of shade, restrooms, shelters, and Bandstand. When we went on Friday, we only went to the sprayground and newer play area.
It is definitely clean since it is so new. The restrooms were right next to the play area. Although Miller park has had a bad reputation in the past, it felt pretty safe to me. Although the playground is huge and dangerous for most of the littlier kids. I think the bigger areas are for ages 5 and up. It had nice tented pavillions with lots of picnic tables. There were a few benches and tables that surrounded the park as well. One thing I loved is that it had that soft rubber material to walk on as opposed to the mulch. This was excellent for my little crawler. I think it will be the only park I will go to until he learns to walk. We give this park 5 stars!!!!

Big slides!!

Spray area

Reece and Brody on the swings.

Let me take a ride on your big green tractor

Pa-pa bought an old JD tractor and now we can go on rides whenever we want.

Pa-pa and Reecey going for a ride.


Mi-Mi, Pa-pa and all the grand kids


Hayrack ride not complete with out chewing on some hay

Our very own "Brady" Bunch...In the back - Gracie, Reecey, Tate; In the front: Bo, Brody, Kennedy

Gettin' Ready!

Getting ready for football season...

Getting ready to go somewhere...this is how we roll...

Getting ready for church

More firsts

Brody fought the ravioli...and the ravioli won.


Cowboy up!

Reecey treats Harley like her baby and is now strong enough to carry him around.

More firsts...

Brody is starting to pull up a little...just on the top stair or my lap (so things that are low) so far. I think he will be a late walker...well, late to me since Reece walked the week of her first birthday. I can hardly get him to stand and when I try to get him to walk, he doesn't even move his feet in front of the other. He gets around pretty fast nonetheless doing the army crawl still. He is getting up on all 4's and rocking some and he can go from his belly back to sitting and from sitting down to his belly. He also started clapping!

This is what he does when he is done playing in the play room...pulls up on the bottom stair and whines. Time to get out the baby gate again!

Reece figured out that side walk chalk becomes body paint by just soaking it in water. Glad I buy at least one 50 cent swim suit at a garage sale each year for her to do things like this! We have been doing a lot of baths before nap time now too...which is really nice for our evening!

Fair is for Ferris Wheel

We had a fairy fun time at the fair this year. Reece is at the age where everything was just so cool for her to see. I was suprised that at her age, she would point to rides and say "ride that". I thought that started at a later age. Maybe for most kids it does and our kid is just as fearless as we thought. You won't see Brody in any of these pics...he was in the stroller mostly crying as he wanted to get out and crawl.

These were the baby pigs at the booth that daddy was working (dark haired lady is the neighbor that we always talk about).

Here she is again taking Reece on her first pony ride.

Reece went on like all the rides...carousel, drove the trucks, big fun slide, motorcycles, etc...Here she is on the mini ferris wheel. By the end of the ride she had her chin on her hand bored to death. She gets off and points to the big 50 foot one and says "ride that". I really didn't think she'd do it but...

She did...with the company of her father. Keep your eye on car number 2...you can see her little piggies (you'll probably have to click on the picture to enlarge it)

The whole time she was hanging off the side waving (as I stood there and sweat...still am as I am typing this). She exits the ride and says "more, more". She's nuttier than I thought. Then we go over to the fun house and she freaks as soon as her foot hit the ball pit. I guess she thought she was going to sink. Brock had to go in and rescue her as she was screaming at the tops of her lungs "all done, all done!". I am still trying to understand how she can get so freaked out over a ball pit when she just got off a 50 foot ferris wheel.

Happy 2nd Birthday Bo!

I am a little late on getting this out because Bo's birthday was Tuesday and his party was last Sunday. But Happy Birthday Bo! Here are just a couple of photos from his Mickey Mouse party...Hot Diggity Dog!

Summer time photo shoot - Reece 27 months, Brody 9 months

We had Aunt Jo-Jo come over a few weeks ago and take some pictures. It was hard to capture both kids smiling in a picture together, but individually they did really well. There were so many pictures but they take forever to upload on here...so here's a few of my favorites.