Splash Pad and Trolley Ride

One of the activities on my summertime "bucket list" was to take the kids and do the Farmers Market down in the River Market, do the Peabody splash pad and take the trolley ride across the river over into North Little Rock.  I'd told Carol it was something I was wanting to do, so we decided to give it a go.

We arrived early, parked our cars and unloaded our nine kids.  We got many, many looks and had several people comment that "we had our hands full"...but as she always says, "hands full heart fuller" and I totally concur!  We decided to bring strollers to help carry the food we were looking forward to purchasing in the market, the beach towels, the picnic lunches as well as all the other necessities; we looked a bit like pack mules, but that's ok.

The River Market wasn't huge but there were several booths to buy from and Ava Jane helped me pick out some squash, zucchini, cucumbers and blueberries.

We didn't spend a ton of time picking out food, we pretty much got what we wanted and headed to the splash pad which is just a few steps away from the River Market.  The kids had a great time running through the water and climbing on all the rocks.

A bus load of kids arrived and as they filed in, I quickly started gathering my kids because it would be way too difficult to keep track of them in the midst of that crowd.  Carol caught the chaos of the moment in the below picture.  Before the school arrived we pretty much had the park to ourselves.

We decided to grab a picnic table and eat a little bit early then head to the trolley stop.  I was sweating so badly that my entire shirt was soaked through as you can see in this oh so lovely picture!  Eek!

We headed back to the cars to put our strollers and other items away so that we could more easily board the trolley.  We laughed along the way as people watched and commented on us having a lot of children in our care.  I jokingly said to a gentleman we encountered that we were like a small preschool class.  We stood outside Cache restaurant for quite some time waiting and sweating in the sun, unfortunately there's not an exact time listed as to when the trolley will arrive, all we knew was that it ran every 15 to 20 minutes...but that's a long time for nine hot little people and there Momma's to wait with the sun bearing down on us.

We were all thrilled when the yellow trolley made its way to our stop.

The view from the street car was pretty, it really was such a lovely day to be outside.   The kids enjoyed seeing the bridge and being up high in the air over the water.  Us Momma's were just thrilled to be sitting in the air-conditioning.

We did have fun with our kids, but let there be no mistake, it.was.super-de-duper.hot!