"My ACTUAL birthday!"

We didn't have anything fancy planned for Maya's "actual" birthday (Sunday) since she had already had her tea party. We told her she could choose the family activity for the day. She said she wanted to go hiking and go to a park. Neither child though seemed like they wanted to be in the car for very long. Grace McDonald park is close to our house and offers some short hiking trails plus the playground all in one place so we headed there.

For some reason the kids love playing pretend baseball on the baseball diamond there.

They also love the "bucking duck". We have the Berenstain Bears book "Get the Gimmes" and it features a ride the cubs love called the "bucking duck" along with the "bucking frog". Seriously. There is one paragraph in particular that we are convinced is only in there to see how many parents will get tongue twisted and accidentally drop an "F-bomb".

For the record this park not only has a bucking duck but also a bucking car and a bucking horse. I had a bucking car once......

Anyway - back to Maya's birthday!

We also went for a little hike and collected some acorn caps for a fall project we will be working on.

We happened to be at the park right when they were giving free Pickleball lessons. Alex was pretty intrigued and I was curious too. It's mentioned all the time in the township newsletter. Apparently it's huge around here among seniors. Who knew. So Alex and I went and had a lesson. It's pretty fun, a strange combination of badminton, tennis and ping pong. Alex did very well. The woman teaching said he was the youngest child she had ever taught, she usually teaches junior high kids or adults.

I don't know that we'll be running out and buying all of us pickleball gear or joining the local leagues...but we might go over to the park on another Sunday afternoon when they have the lessons.

On the way home we told Maya she could pick out a small cake or cupcakes at the grocery store. I wasn't up for baking again and have been trying to get the regular flour out of our house so this seemed like a good solution.

Happy Birthday Maya! We can't believe you are 4!