Early Release Week

We have parent-teacher conferences this week at Eli's school, so he is on an early-release schedule each day. That puts him home before Maddux each day, giving us lots of fun play time each afternoon. Today I decided to take the kids hiking. We are very fortunate to have a great set of shorter trails just over a mile from our house. The kids hadn't been in a while, so off we went. With no worry of return time, we set out to throw rocks at the creek itself. This system of trails all lead to the same place eventually, but there are a million different ways to go. Because of that, I rarely look at the map unless I'm on a time schedule. I let the kids lead us to the creek this time which put us at a location I'd never been before. We were way further down than usual, and the hike back up was really steep. I opted instead to have us hike back along the 'shore' of the creek. This was fine except for two parts with extremely steep climbs on a very thin trail with a hill up on one side and nothing but rocks and water (waaaay down) on the other. I love that kind of stuff, but when you're the only adult with two kids who don't seem to have a concept of 'careful', it's quite stressful.

We all survived and made it back to our usual stomping ground eventually. One trip around the paper mill and then we started back to the car. Immediately Eli got stung by a bee. He was a trooper, only crying for a minute. The whole walk back, he held my hand, so I can't say it was sad for me! Also, the whole walk back, Maddux played hide-and-seek. She kinda played with herself because we never looked for her. We'd just turn around and she'd be out of sight, behind a tree. Crazy girl... I loved loved loved every minute of my time with them today...need to find a way to make them stop growing immediately.