The New Neighborhood Park

Happy October everyone! Yes, I'm thinking it... "Where did September go?" Same thing I think at the beginning of every month. I tell ya each month seems to go buy faster than the previous month! Since this is my first October post I need to catch ya up on a few things. I meant to mention in my last post about my friend Jess coming to cook last Wednesday. This was the second week in a row she's come to "borrow" my kitchen. They've been in a hotel for two weeks since the fire, and Jess has been missing her kitchen. The week before she asked if she could come cook dinner. Of course I said absolutely because I know Jess is a great cook! So she brought everything to make Lasagna. She took some for her family back to the hotel and left the rest for us. Then again this past Wednesday she was coming over to make Amish Friendship Bread with me, and said she'd bring stuff to make dinner. She ended up bringing steaks, veggies, and these very yummy parmesan garlic mashed potatoes! What a treat! The steak was absolutely delicious and hit the spot! Thanks to Jess for making us dinner both weeks. We're getting a little spoiled having dinner made for us once a week. Jess and her family moved to an apartment now until their house gets renovated so now she has a kitchen so we probably won't be getting dinner. However if you're reading Jess, feel free to come on by still and use my kitchen! Haha!

I'm also here to tell you tonight about our new neighborhood park! Finally after four years of living here, the park is actually a reality! A little background about the neighborhood park. When we decided to build our house in this neighborhood we were told by the builder that there would be a park with playground equipment. It was pretty much implied that it would be in the near future. Well little did we know, or many other of our neighbors that it wasn't in the near future. Come to find out about a year ago, the area where the park was supposed to go is actually owned by the city. It's not even the builders property so they were promising something to buyers that they really had no control over. Well thankfully some of us in the neighborhood got on the bandwagon about a year ago and after many meetings with the city of East Lansing, we were finally told there would be a park. The city got a grant to develop the park and this time it was for sure that there would be a park. After much work over the past year getting the land ready for where the park was to go, it finally got finished about a week or so ago. It's not totally finished, but the playground part of it is so that's all that really matters to the kids in the neighborhood! Finally a place right nearby to go play! There's still some trees that are going to be planted, a pavilion put in, and a few other things, but at least all of us in the neighborhood can take the kids to the park to play. Since it's owned by the city it is a public park which anyone can come to, but at least there's a park. We've visited quite a few times since the playground opened in the last week. Friday night we hung out with the kids there for a little bit and here's a few pics I snapped while we were there.

Here's a view of the playground at the park from the entrance closest to our house.

Emmaline wasted no time hitting the playground equipment!

And she's off to another piece of the playground structure. I think she's my little monkey. She loves to climb on everything at the park!Here's my other little monkey climbing up the tree trunk!

The kids love to swing together!

Emme really enjoys the swings. She likes to go high up!
The park isn't far from the house at all. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but between the two brown houses you can see our red house peeking through. That gives you an idea of how close the park is.