GG's Kids and a Wildlife Preserve

I don't see these little tigers as often as I would like. CJ is in the 2nd grade, Dylan is in Kindergarten and Tyler is busy all the time. Their mommy is my oldest  grandchild.

Yesterday grand daughter Kim gave me a call and asked if we could meet her and the princess at Wendy's. Of course that was a big YES. 

She loves her GG.

Viola spent the day with her sister and brother today and Joe had a surprise for me. First we went to Wichita Feed and Hardware not too far from where we live. This is what I saw when we stepped inside. I have never seen so much "stuff" in my life. This little store has wooden floors, and has been in business since 1947.  Why did we go there?  To get cracked corn to feed the ducks?

He has been telling me about this park near Miramont Pointe where he works that they take the residents to go for walks a couple times a week. This was my surprise. Today WE took that walk.  On a real board walk through wetlands.

 

It was a beautiful walk. Cool but not raining. I could hear birds singing but couldn't see them.

In the middle of the wetlands, was this pond  and ducks every where.  We started feeding them the corn. We had a lot of laughs watching them "standing on their heads" in the water getting the food.

While we were there this sweet little 3 1/2 year old girl with her mommy came to see the ducks. She told us she sits on the steps with mom to watch the ducks.  Can you imagine her delight when Joe asked mom if he could give the rest of the corn in the paper bag to her to feed the ducks.  When we left, sure enough, she was sitting on the steps, this time, feeding those ducks.

I love what looks like dried moss on the trees. Can anyone tell me what the name of it is?  I asked Joe to bring me back again when the trees have their leaves and  the marsh has woken from it's winter sleep.  I'm sure it will look different.

Just a gentle little stream

Don't know what these are either, but  it was something pretty to look at.

Quiet, still water.

We felt a little bad when we got to the other side of the pond because when I started feeding some of the ducks there, the rest of them came from the other side where the little girl was enjoying feeding them her corn.  So we didn't stay very long.

Sometimes I hear that  they see Joe in the pictures but not me very often.  There is a good reason for that.  I'm taking the pictures. I gave the camera/iPhone to Joe today and some of these pictures are his.

I just couldn't get enough of this beautiful boardwalk.

As we were nearing the end of the walk, we kept hearing a beautiful bird song that sort of sounded like "Pretty Bird",  "Pretty Bird"  But we couldn't see the bird.  Then Joe said look up.  There is the music maker.  Do you see  it?

I thought the root system of this tree was very interesting.

Our car is parked close to the playgrounds and we saw this interesting swing.  It is an adult safety swing. So Joe tried it out and we both had a giggling good time. What a wonderful thing to have for an older handicapped  child or adult to be able to swing.  I remember one time when we were in Tombstone, there was an old fashioned swing we were able to help Joe's mom Viola, who was 93 at the time, to sit in it and swing a little bit but it wasn't  safe.  This is a safe swing.  Unfortunately, someone has vandalized it by cutting off the extra  the safety straps.  I really hope the parks system can fix it soon.