We have had really nice weather the past few days...right in the mid 80's - perfect for exploring around the great outdoors! The boys and I packed our picnic lunch yesterday and drove over to a park by the river.
If you've seen the boys as of late, i'm sure you've noticed all their bug bites! Ryker wont wear a shirt very often, and obviously mom forgets to bring and apply bug spray quite often. Well, yesterday, we remembered..and we coated ourselves before walking along the river and the bike path - i dont even remember getting bit once, or watching the kids swat at themselves either! Nice work with the bugspray, Mandy!
The boys have always loved going to the river and the falls to throw rocks! So of course we spent a good portion of the afternoon throwing rocks of all sizes into the water and checking out the size of our splashes. We unsuccessfully skipped all the flat rocks, but had fun trying!
We slowly wandered down the river, checking the banks for frogs or turtles..we saw dragonflies, a slug, and jumping fish. No frogs or turtles this time..which is kinda odd. But that's ok because it's usally, 'mom, catch it!'. and mom doesn't like to just reach out and grab those things..no way!
They are really good with wanting to pick up trash and litter - sometimes to the point where i'm thinking 'stop looking for trash!' or i can't believe you just picked that up, it's disgusting!'. They just want to keep the earth clean, and i'm happy for that.
We walked for a little while until we found a spot off the bike path that the boys wanted to check out, so we headed down the little hill towards some rocks and an overflow, drainer thing..which the boys informed me was a waterfall that is our own special place because they discovered it and nobody else knows about it. I decided not to bring any unnecessary disappointment and simply said, 'oh wow, you guys found a cool little spot, I bet nobody knows we're down here!'
In case you didn't realize - It's very important that we look for 'treasures' while exploring the outdoors. The boys brought a plastic container to house any special treasures that they found along the way. I think we only ended up taking home two little fishing line weights...are they called sinkers? weights? one of them was even still tied to a broken line..i guess that made it extra cool. It's sometimes a difficult concept to understand that things in nature, stay in nature...but things that dont' belong can go. Right by the little weights was the remains of a little lobster, entangled in another portion of fishing line, and two other former lobsters in the water between some rocks. They all stayed, in fact they didn't even ask to take them home... thank goodness they are figuring it out. yuk..i wouldn't have been to keen on those 'treasures' hanging out in my house.
I sat on some rocks with my feet in the water as the kids entertained themselves by throwing rocks - a few times ryker's wild swing resulted in rocks almost nailing my camera, so... after completely soaking his shoes a few times and having to give three warnings to 'aim straight ahead and away from my camera!', we called it good and grabbed the container with the treasures and walked back toward the park to play for awhile before going home.
It was a nice relaxing day -- according to Brecken, it was 'a super fun long day'. As for today..I think we'll go explore the paths and play at Union Grove State Park when Ben gets home from work this evening. ..and I can't wait to see what kind of things we'll find!
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