Freestone Park, Gilbert, Arizona

I promised the kids we could return to Freestone Park so that they could play longer.  The park has a small amusement ride area (rather expensive if you ask me!) and they were super excited to try it out.  I had just enough cash to let them go on the train ride around the park.  They loved it!  I let Jillian take the camera and snap some pictures as they went around.  The weather that day was wonderful!!  I was kicking myself because I didn't bring enough warm weather clothing.  It was so nice to be outside though!

An interesting side note about Freestone Park.  It was named after the Freestone family, who were quite influential in the area and donated money (and maybe land but I'm not sure about that) to the town of Gilbert.  Brad's dad grew up in Mesa (the city just north of Gilbert) and knew the family quite well; he and Eric Freestone had wrestled in high school together and Eric even dated Brad's aunt in high school for a while as well.  When we moved out to Missouri, we found that  Eric Freestone lived in our ward!  Small world!!

 Jorja before the ride, taken by Jillian

 Logan before the ride, taken by Jillian

 Jorja, Logan and Jillian before the ride

 Freestone Park is really nice.  There is a lake in the center that attracts lots of waterfowl, several playgrounds, a skate park, a baseball park, batting cages, and gigantic fields to play field games.

 One of the big soccer fields.  Water retention basins double as soccer fields all over the valley.

 This was taken on the far side of the lake.  I was waiting for them underneath a "shady" palm trees.  We all agreed that the palm trees were much prettier in San Diego than in Phoenix.

Jillian thought this egret was pretty cool and then when it took off, she was excited to catch a picture of it in flight.  I love that my kids think nature is cool...because it is!!!

 Fortunately, I had some crackers in the car so the kids were able to feed the ducks.  It was really fun to watch the ducks fight over the food.  I think some of them were having territorial fights though (the territory being the female ducks).  You could definitely see that some of the ducks were paired off.

 Freestone Park also has some really neat waterfall areas.  Jillian took these pictures of the white duck with only one leg down.  She thought that was pretty funny!  You can see a male and female mallard duck in the shadow on the picture above also.

 

 There were several different kinds of waterfowl there so we made sure we had a picture of all of them.  Above is a male and female American Wigeon

 

 This is a male Northern Shoveler.  The male birds are always more colorful than the females because it is the females that choose the males.

 An American Coot!  We laughed at their honking because it sounds like someone passing gas. Jillian said they should be called the American Toot!! Ha!

 The coots kept coming on shore in flocks so Logan thought it would be fun to run them off.  I tried to get a picture of it all in action but after a few times they were wary of him and kept flying away before I could get him in the picture as well.