Orr Park

 On the first day of each season, I like to celebrate and the more people I can drag along, the better.

Matt and I have kicked around driving to Orr Park, which is south of Birmingham at Montevallo for the better part of a year now.  I decided today was the day.  I posted to see if anyone from dance wanted to drive down early and join us.  They all did!  Matt surprised me by taking the day off and Gina drove to meet us with Brit at the mechanic's when we dropped off his car to get the oil changed this morning.  Everything fell into place.

We arrived around 11, with Amanda and Sunni right behind us, Katy was about 90 seconds behind them and Stephanie pulled in as we were unloaded.  We joined the 4 other families at the pavilion across the creek by the playground and were happy to see another big group of homeschoolers already there.  The kids joined forces super fast, playing all kinds of running and sweating games.  The moms set up picnics and got drinks ready and chatted with one another.  We broke into smaller groups and strolled around to explore so there were always plenty of adults around where the kids were playing.  There were about 35 people in our dance group and the other homeschool group, so there were many games of Frisbee and soccer for the older kids, the younger playing on the playground and riding scooters or flying kites and all ages had the hoops and bubbles going.

Orr Park is lovely on its own.  There's a wide creek right through the middle with big trees and rolling hills and walkways.  Today the sun was up after DAYS of clouds and rain and cold.  It was cloudless and warm and everyone was giddy from the beauty of the day.  And the pollen.

The reason we wanted to go here in particular when there are a hundred other pretty parks in the state was to see the tree carvings.  Tim Tingle got permission to start carving dead cedar trees many years ago and over time has transformed around 30 into people and animals.  One of the younger kids said, "WHOA! 1997!" when he saw the date carved into the tree.  It made me smile in that way that I am sure Europeans smile when we say things like, "My house is 80 years old!"

Zoomed in on a bee tree!  

Matt and Emma headed over to a tiny island to hunt for a cache.

The water was too deep to wade, so they took the pipe over.  Emma strolled it.

Guess what she saw!?

They looked for a bit, but the snake must have taken the cache when it hid itself!

While they crashed around in the brush, I played around with my macro back on Terra Firma.

Happy Clovers!

We wandered around a while, went back to eat a while, wandered around a while, went back to chat a while.  It was a really relaxing and WARM day.

Much too soon, we had to hit the road for dance.  While the worn out kids tried to master something called Crazy Foot Mambo, the adults sat outside and watched the little ones play and chatted about camping and dreaming of vacations in other countries.  Typical warm weather fare.  :)