2022
Mum's who Map – August Meet-up
It was cold, but a mostly clear day for the August Mum's who Map meet-up – overcast but no rain! Despite the weather and the fact that we are at the end of a terrible cold and flu season for those of us who have young children, 4 mums joined me with their kids for this meet-up. In total there was 5 Mums and 9 kids of ages from 1 through to 13.
There was a lot of planning of course. When you are bringing younger kids along, the selection of the best venue is crucial. In this case, as it is for most of our meets, I usually choose a park as this gives us mum's an opportunity to get together and talk maps, while our kids run around and have fun. Play centres have been considered and talked about but they are so noisy that we have decided not to go there.
**Welcome to the Mum's Who Map Meet-up - Letting the Mums know which table at the park we are at.
This time the park selected was Bundoora Park. This is a huge place so I specifically chose a part of the park that is essentially a park within a park. There is a farm at Bundoora park and in front of it is the farm entry and cafe. Backing onto the side of the cafe is a fantastic, fully fenced park which has almost everything you could need for a meet-up like this – undercover tables, drinking fountains, toilets inside that have baby changing facilities, a cafe to grab much welcomed coffee, fencing all the way around the park so we know our kids are safe and most of all, heaps of different types of things in the park for the kids to keep themselves occupied with.
**Me and my 1-year-old (and her runny nose – it was chilly out!)
All of the Mums except for 1 were newcomers to the meet. The Mum's Who Map meet-ups are very informal. Mainly being a chat in the park where we do some editing, talk about the features we are liking and ones we would like to see added as well as add new places or places we have been to that are missing from the map.
Two of the Mum's were newcomers to Local Guides and came along to get more information on what Local Guides are and the program itself. So we spent some time discussing this, the perks and all the things you can do being a local guide, and the local guides connect community. Hopefully, we start to see them getting involved with Local Guides Connect!
We then added a few places to the map. We discovered that the part of the park we were in, as well as the cafe was not added to the map! Only the larger body of Bundoora park was listed. So we went through and added it and all took a heap of photos to upload to the new listing. This should help heaps of others find this place quicker and easier. We actually found this out as the Mums started making their way to the meet. All of them looked it up on Google but none of them could find anything more specific than the whole park. They all had to call me for directions rather than being able to use maps for this. Hopefully, we have now fixed this for others in the future!
** The Mum's Who Map – Less One and her daughter who had to leave before we took this photo.
After a couple of hours the kids had filled up on biscuits and fruit that I had brought to the meet and were starting to get tired and grumpy, so it was time to say good bye. It was an excellent day with much achieved and new friendships formed between both mums and between their kids.
And that is a big part of what Mum's Who Map is about. Getting mums together to meet others with this shared interest and hopefully become friends as well as guides who are mums. And it gives our kids a chance to meet with other kids with whom they may not have met otherwise and make some new friendships.
Here are some more photos from the meet:
** Some of the kids playing
**More of the kids having a good time
**Coming to steal chocolate biscuits and fruit
