Sunday, November 1, 2009

Friday Nature Walk

On Friday, the sun came out. All of the sudden it felt like something had changed and I had to stop and figure out what it was. It was the light. It has been raining here for a week straight. The skies have been a dark dingy gray - gloomy and depressing. When the sun peaked out on Friday morning, I felt an urgent need to get out into the sun before it left us again.

The kids were out of school on Friday, so it took us a good 20 minutes to get everyone ready to go. Everyone needed a hat and mittens (it was cold!), we had to have arguments on who was riding, who was walking and who was pushing and the baby was furious about the whole thing. He sensibly decided to fall asleep the minute we actually started our walk and stayed sleeping the entire time. We walked for an hour and a half.


We saw a lot of puddles and the foolish children stuck their hands in the first one they could find and were left with soggy, cold gloves . . .


. . . we saw some living things . . .


. . . and lots of dead things . . .


. . . we saw lots of these signs, but few kids were outside . . .


. . . we found lots of worms.


We brought baskets to fill with leaves and twigs. We filled them again and again because it was so windy that the leaves blew out as soon as they were gathered. Several times we had to give chase to a basket being tossed aside by the wind.


We stopped to play on the playground at school. All of the unattended basket blew into the weeds by the pond.


We walked so far that we came to a new town. . .



. . . and had to rest.


We saw a farm and waved to the cows. We stopped to pet every dog we passed.


We lost time rescuing every bug stranded on the road.


We checked out Halloween decorations.


It was a long, cold windy walk - but the sun was out and it was beautiful.

As we arrived in the cul-de-sac, the kids ran ahead. One of the daycare girls could not hold it in any longer and peed all over my front porch and then stripped herself naked to the waist and stood waiting there as I arrived with the stroller.

That was not so beautiful.

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