Another day another park

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know that on a day off, we're very often headed for a park, if the weather is fine. Today we headed to one of our standard parks, Koukuu Park (Aviation Park).  Here's a post about another time we visited there.

Gorgeous autumn colours.

It is six years since we first started coming to this park and a few things have changed. Not the park, but for us. Since we've moved further away it is now easier to catch a train to the park. Our boys have also grown up a bit. So they all walk under their own power. I remember chasing boys around this park while pushing a pram (US=stroller?). I even lost the two older ones one day when I was here on my own with them. That wasn't fun.

A spirit of nostalgia seemed to grip our boys today and we had lots of "I remember when..." conversations. This park is full of memories for them. We've had kindergarten outings here, visited the Aviation museum a few times, brought friends here (see this post), our eldest ran a cross-country relay here and of course, many just-family days in the park. 

One of the nostaligic places is a fabulous climbing tree. We found this tree the day we moved out of our previous house in Tokyo, only days before we returned to Australia for our Home Assignment in 2009. I brought the boys to the park to allow David time to complete the final bits and pieces of cleaning out the house and they found this tree. 

Today we "found" it again and the boys had a great time. David and I did too. We set up our picnic mat, pulled out some relaxation material and let the boys go at it. They played in the tree for a while, then wandered off to the play equipment a couple of hundred metres away. They followed the small stream down to the pond too. All without need for our supervision. It was blissful. We told them to come back when they got hungry.

After lunch we wandered off to another favourite corner, the stand of Gum Trees!!! And went hunting for fresh gum leaves on the ground. We were rewarded with a few and the boys got all nostalgic again with the scent from a crushed leaf, "Aww, I'm Australia-sick." they said.

Hunting for gum leaves.

The pile of gum leaves that we collected (and brought home).

Then a brisk game of Frisbees and we were headed home on the train again. Via the Doctor for a Flu injection and then the promised reward, Mister Donuts. Lots of conversation as we walked; they often run ahead of us, but today they hung around and talked. Lots of comfortable companionship. Our boys are growing up, and it's enjoyable.

You will see from the photos that it was a grey day (not good for photos and I forgot my good camera anyway), but the clouds were high and the temperature moderate (low 20s). So it's been a very pleasant day-off all round. Just what we needed.