I have invited a guest blogger to contribute to this post, and I will let him introduce himself:

My name is Benjamin. I am 5 years old. We went to Germany this August to see Grandma and Grandad and some of my uncles and aunts and cousins. We did some fun things there. We played in lots of parks and I’m going to tell you about the parks.

* Molly, 2 1/2, also contributed some thoughts.

The first park we went to was close to the river. This is a picture of the climber. All the parks in Germany were made of logs and ropes and chains and tires. I thought that was really cool.

This is a picture of me on the log stairs. You had to climb and hold onto the rope to balance.

This is the rope bridge. We needed to use a rope on this bridge too. After we went on the rope bridge we got to the shaky bridge which I call the “Shake-shake bridge.”

After you went across the Shake-shake bridge you got to the climber! This is a picture of Molly at the top of the slide.

There was a swing made out of rope and it looked like a spider web. You could put 3 kids in that swing!

You could pull the bucket in the sandpit up with the chain. It felt light! If you let go of the chain the bucket would fall down fast!

There was a stump in the sandpit with little holes you could put sand through.

Everyone had fun at the park, even my daddy Ian!

One day we went to a Rodelbahn. We went up a mountain on a chairlift and then we came down on a big slide. At the bottom there was a playground with a ride-on clam-digger. We had to put money into the slot to turn the motor on and then when we pulled the levers it would work. The scoop picked up stones and moved them around and dumped them.

There was also a helicopter. On the helicopter you also had to put money in the slot and then it would go up. The helicopter’s lever didn’t move but you could push the screw on the top of the lever and it would make sounds.

There were also trampolines and we had fun jumping on them.

There was also a slide and a sandbox but we don’t have any pictures of them.

One day, we took a walk in the woods and we found a playground! There were stairs to come down to look at the stream. This is a picture of us playing in the stream. Molly added, “That park we went to. I liked it. We went to see a river and grandad come with us and grandma come with us too.”

This is a picture of the shaky bridge, which I call the “Shake-shake bridge” too. This shake-shake bridge goes over the river. I called the river that the shake-shake bridge went over “the Logging Pond.” The bridge was really shaky and really high.

There was a wooden train. You could only sit on it because it was made of wood and it didn’t make steam because it had a wood funnel but you could pretend you were driving it. Molly says, “And I went on that choo-choo train.”

This is a picture of me (Ben) on the climbing tree. I think it was made out of a tree with the leaves taken off and parts of the branches sawed off.

This is a picture of grandma swinging. I think she is having fun!

We all had a lot of fun playing at that park.

On another day we went on another walk in the woods. There was a xylophone made of wood. I didn’t play a song, I just played it, but Molly played, “It’s a Hard-Knock Life,” and sang.

This is a picture of me on the see-saw. There was also a jungle gym and a sandbox. To get to the stream you had to go to the other side of the grass. You have to go down the bank to get to the water but you can still see it from the top. You didn’t have to climb down the bank because there were stairs.

We went wading in the stream. It was cold! We didn’t see any fish. There weren’t fish in any of the streams but there were fish in the lake.

I think this is a picture Molly and Uncle Martin. I think Uncle Martin was going to lift Molly into the swing. This is the swing set and the climber. The slide is really slippery, especially when you’re wet!

The last park we went to was on top of a mountain! We took a cable car up the mountain to get to it. When the cable car got to us, so many people got out that I said, “Is this a cable car or a party?”

We went so high that we went in the cloud so it was misty at the park because we were inside a cloud. This is a picture of the high tower. It was the highest climber that I have ever seen!

There was a shaky bridge which I called a “Shake-shake bridge” too. It was made  out of logs hanging with chains.

This is a picture of Ian on the zip line. There was a green circle that you had to sit and then you pushed off and went really, really fast, as fast as me!! You would go all the way to the end and then come back.

This is a picture of Molly and her doll Charlie on the swing. I think the swing was a chair from a chairlift like one at the Rodelbahn. Two people can fit in this swing together.

This is the rope climber. It also had those green circles like on the zip line but this time they were for swinging. We could climb all the way up to the top.

We were so high up and this is a picture of our view from when we looked down from the cable car on the way down.

I thought that the parks in Germany were a lot different then the ones back in Canada. They were a lot of fun. I loved the clam-digger and I love all the Shake-shake bridges. I really want to back and play on them again one day!

~ Ben

(dictated to mommy)