Picnic In The Park

Sunny and 80 degrees. What better weather can you ask for when hosting a picnic in the park?   My kids get so excited about spending time in the park eating and playing. They are really excited today because daddy and lots of our friends are joining us too.

We invited local homeschoolers to join us for a fun time of fellowship, food, and playing in the park. It was an awesome turnout with 41 homeschoolers spending time together.

Fellowship is one of the sweet rewards of homeschooling, time for each other, time for building relationships, and time to enjoy time! Time is usually something we “modern” humans are short on. Isn’t it special to have enough time to enjoy life?

Everyone brought a delicious variety of foods to share. We had lots of lunch meat sandwiches, tuna salad & crackers, pizza, vegetable sticks (carrot, celery), fruits (honey dew, cantaloupe, blueberries, grapes, pineapple, granny smith apples, red delicious apples), no bake chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies, several kinds of chips, water, juice, and soda to drink, etc. It was a feast!

But what they brought most importantly was each other!

And some very hungry kids!

I just love to see their excitement. It gets me excited! Oh, to be a kid again!

As each family arrived, parents were asked to sign and then fold pieces of paper with their own names and their kids names on them for door prizes.

They placed the folded papers into recycled jars labeled either “parent names” or “kid names”. Then after we ate, we drew names from each jar for prize giveaways.

We were able to give away parent door prizes and kid door prizes today, thanks to my sweet husband who took me shopping over the weekend to find some fun stuff to give away. We went to Whole Foods health food store and bought these healthy all natural items to give away for parent prizes!    All natural cheese puffs, juice spritzers, and chai tea.

When we got home from the first trip, my husband went out again to the local toy store and bought 2 frisbees, and 8 packs of bubbles to give away for the kid prizes!

The kids and parents were thrilled to hear their name called! I captured of few of them on camera. I had the most fun handing out the prizes and seeing their smiling faces!

Not only did we have fun eating and fellowshipping together, we also had fun playing together too. Playing together results in some fun socialization and physical education (PE) time.

Here are a few snapshots from the fun. I always take way to many pictures and I have a hard time picking just a few pictures to share with you.

Playing on the playground:

Frisbee:

And we ended up with a frisbee on the roof of the picnic shelter. We got it back thanks to a brave father and son duo willing to “scale the tall building roof in a single bound”!

Baseball:

Bean Bag Toss:

Hide & Seek:

And we took a nature walk around the walking paths to see what flowers were blooming, and other interesting things to see in the park. We saw some squirrels in a tree, bees buzzing around, and some ants on picnic tables. We saw lots of interesting trees and flowers too.

Science Challenge

Name these plants found in the park today. Please leave your answers in the comment area below, thank you.

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      Thank you Lord for such a beautiful day!