Giggle fest

So, the revamped Puget Park on Proctor passes the test of every kid in the family, including my husband. I don't think I have ever heard the 6-year-old giggle so hard, for so long, without me having to stand ready at a tire swing for half an hour or something like that.

Seriously, my daughter is a tire swing addict. She likes to spin and spin and spin ... the kids have a tire swing game where they pretend they're being "flushed." All fun and good, but out of the three kids, she enjoyed it the most, then the others would want to do other things, and they're younger and require more assistance, but the eldest would need to be spun. It got rather tiring.

At the freshly re-toyed Puget Park, there is no tire swing.

At first, I thought there would be protests, as this was the main reason the kids used to lobby to go to this park. But in the place of the tire swing were many, many spinny things. Including one kind of bucket-chair-like thing that basically spins an individual as if they were on a tire swing, and it's very easy to self propel.

And self propel she did. Practically the entire time we were there. And giggled. And giggled. And let her hair fly. She leaned back and figured out how to twist just so, so that she'd spin more and more and more. And here and there her mommy or daddy would go over and spin her extra fast and make her shriek with glee, but it was not mandatory. We were also free to chase the 2-year-old around the play structure as she climbed the rope ladders, hung from bars and slid happily down slides to repeat again. The 4-year-old managed to make a buddy within 10 seconds, a buddy who had two play swords, so they ran around the place having fake -- and surprisingly very safe -- sword fights as they ran around their castle making manly noises, until more kids arrive and the parents all decided that the swords were becoming a bit too much of a risk, so then the boys continued to run around, pretend to be cheetahs, sell ice cream, pretend to be in an office, pretend to be cheetahs, and generally run and jump and play and spin and slide and ...

Oh, then there were also all the 12-year-olds gathered having nearly as much fun. And the grownups were trying out many a toy as well.

Well done parks folks, well done ... can't wait until Jane Clark Park gets its face lift! (It's way closer ...)