Lake Rabecca Park Reserve 2011

Last year, we discovered the newly remodeled Lake Rabecca Park Reserve in Delano. It only takes us about twenty minutes to get there using our back country roads. It is just awesome! The playground is a "big woods" theme and this year they added a forest fire lookout tower.

The fire tower is a play replica of actual fire towers built in the the 1930s for the Civilian Conservation Corpes under Franklin D. Roosevelt (pretty much one of the greatest Presidents ever). FUN FACT - I went to Roosevelt Middle School. :) The towers were built so that forest fires could be spotted, radioed in to the fire department and keep them from spreading.

The fire towers were put in heavily wooded forest areas and men would take turns camping out for weeks and watching for forest fires. I thought it was so cool that they erected a steel mini replica of fire tower for kids to explore. It came with telescopes which Logan spent the majority of his time looking through!

In addition to that, they have an Abe Lincoln style log cabin, hollowed out log, tree fort, and cave. The tree house is so cool! It goes up three stories from the ground and has a long windy slide to the bottom. Why didn't we have parks like this when I was little?

Lake Rabecca is a pristine little lake with a really nice beach. It has plenty of shade,a sandy bottom and picnic tables. Since it is run by the DNR the view is beautiful because there are no houses on the lake! :) I also love the water quality, the lake goes deep about half way through the the swimming area and there is no seaweed or algae!


My kiddos love coming here. It is the perfect getaway for a hot summer day when mom has nothing planned! We came here on a moments notice when I saw that the kids were hot and bored and it has been a favorite destination this entire summer.




We even went one 90 degree night
after Mike got home from work. He agreed that it was the perfect hang out for families. It is so weird that this little gem of a place isn't as busier but truthfully, I'm glad it is not. :)

We've spent the day here playing, swimming then playing again. I know that we will use Lake Rabecca Park Reserve in the many years ahead. I hope you discover it too!

Baseball Season is Over!

Well, when we signed him up for Little League we weren't convinced he would like it. He told me he wanted to play but Logan doesn't actually like to practice. Other than going up to our local park and running the bases like he got a home run.

Logan is the shortest kid on the team (he takes after his mama! So naturally he is #1, which thrilled him when they got their jerseys. He's also up first to bat which was very interesting during the first game. After he hit the ball, he just stood there and then his coach had to go tell him to run to first base. What's funny is, he wasn't the only one! The team finally got it down that you run to the next base when someone hits the ball about half way through the season. :)


Our team was a good mix of kids. There were some that had been working with their dad since they were three (and believe me you could tell.) Then, there were other kids like our son, who had never even picked up a bat. The coaches had the patience of saints. They did a really good job of trying to keep them interested in the drills and not be super competitive during games.


Even though they were only five and six year olds, I caught myself calling out to Logan to "pay attention." He had this habit of of being totally oblivious of what was going on, especially when he was in the outfield. However, mine wasn't the only kid that would play in the dirt or twirl around in circles when he got bored. One of his teammates even got bonked in the head because he had absolutely no interest in paying attention to the other team batting.LOL.

It was good to know that my son was not the only one with the short attention span. He may never be the biggest or best kid on the team but he really did enjoy playing. I'm so happy about that! I can't believe how much he improved in the short amount of time we had for practices and games. March and April were virtually rained out. In fact, summer really didn't seam to start until the end of June, which is the end of baseball season.


Logan was consistently hitting the ball from a coaches throw, not a tee, by the end of the season! When we signed him up we thought he would be doing T-ball but St. Michael thinks that is for wussies. ;D He can scoop a grounder well but he still needs to work on his catching and throwing. Running the bases? He's got that down.

Still, I have sneaking suspicion that my son's favorite part of baseball is the after game snack and horsing around on the bench with his buddies. :) Every team got a medal at the end of the season, which I think is great for kids this young. It encourages them to keep trying and keep having fun.

Go Trojans!