A better type of playground

Sometimes you just need to go play on a frozen marsh apparently.

Our kids have twice this week now gone to play at Potter marsh. Daddy took all three biking and then I took the girls ice skating. And by that I mean E spent about five minutes in her skates and the rest of the time running around in her boots but we’ll call it ice skating.

Anyways it’s been a spectacular spot to just let them loose to play. I will clarify that obviously this is a really popular for people to recreate so it’s pretty easy to tell when all the surrounding ice is safe and the water is not all that deep anyways.

But being in such a different area than normal (essentially open fields vs woods) really changed how the kids could play and explored. Specifically for biking the flat area with lots of “short cuts” for his biking loops gave E a chance to really keep up and go exploring with her brother. We could easily see them, they could see us and they felt like they were exploring following the little “trails” between and around clumps of plants poking through the ice.

Plus who doesn’t love busting open ripe cattails? I certainly do!

It was also really neat that we had a group of us out there playing when this random mom walked up with her toddler and explained that they had seen us as they were driving home. She decided to walk out and see if we were anyone they knew and if not to introduce themselves because she felt like we were someone they should know then! I love it! I’ve never really liked the playground small talk because I want to do more then just bring my kids to those artificial structures and meeting someone who is also have to let their kids just play on some wild ice is much more an indicator of similar interest beyond having children.

Seriously though, playgrounds are great but I spend far more time concerned about what sort of high and exposed place E is getting herself into! Ice skating gives me the perfect excuse to just slap a helmet on her instead.