Found

 

Ben: "I'm going in!"

 

 

A twenty minute hike from our back porch.

 

 

Even the dog was up for a swim.

 

 

Energy.

 

 

And repose.

This Amuses Me

The minor league baseball team in Montgomery. 

The mascot is a big, healthy, athletic biscuit, with a tongue made of a pat of butter.

And yes, they haul around a pig before the games. 

And yes, they call him Gravy.

I Still Love Watching People Watching Us

I went to show the woman the receipt to prove we paid for these as we walked out of the store. 

With a smile: "Oh Dear, I've been watching.  We all know you paid for these."

And in another effort to recreate my own childhood, I tell the boys: "Go away.  Get on your new bikes and go away.  Go to the park.  You can handle this, can't you?"

And they are coaxed out of the house and on to the bikes.  The huge world in front of them, permission to cross that big street and go to the park, the forest, wherever their little legs take them.

Failure: They return after half a hour, with full tales of their adventures. Super excited, and back within 30 minutes.

Weren't they supposed to go away for hours?

A Whole Other Level of Creepy

Um, no words here.

The over-friendly bird has nothing on this guy.

No one will be running down by the riverside any time soon.

The Weekend Outings: Bravery

Didn't you just get back?

See ya.

My plan was to just drive around in the new car all weekend with movies playing. But either I realized what kind of gas money I would be spending or I realized that in a short five weeks we would be sentenced to home confinement or get over ourselves and start going. So we headed to the Botanical Gardens, which I really like to imagine are just my own gardens. The crowd was small enough that each kid had their own play house with one to spare.

After lunch, we took the long way to the zoo.

And maybe sat in the parking lot once we got there for a few minutes to finish naps and the movie.

We trekked to the Teton Trek at the zoo, which was beautiful. This would be where Nicholas decided it would be fun to run off on his own. So the camera went away. And for good or bad, I let him wander on the porch while I watched him through the window for a minute or two to let the whole vastness of being lost sink in. We've been talking a lot lately about how important it is that we stick together in every sense of the word.

And then this on the way back.

It was nearly like camouflaging a set of twins.

Mostly I don't mind the attention we get, but I have my days. This had been a long day. We had been at the zoo for about three hours at this point. I was alone in large open space with them for the first time really. So every time I passed someone and they stared at us; every time I passed someone and I heard them exclaim behind us; every time we negotiated a door and someone just stood and stared at us to watch how we do it (with a little quiet help and a smile from a stranger would be nice); every time people felt comfortable just stopping us to chat; every time someone new walked in the bathroom and stopped short to assess how I was dealing with my kids, I looked away. I wasn't in the mood Saturday. I wasn't trying to be rude, I was really just pretending there was nothing to see.

Really, they were so good that we all got ice-cream at the end and stayed an extra half an hour lingering at the zoo entrance area. Because there was no way that combination was getting in the new van.

And wearing them out must have worked because the escape artist and her sister Alida didn't show up at my door until 7 Sunday morning. And they were perfectly happy to do this while I took a shower and poured a cup of coffee.

Another Day in the Neighborhood...

Nature at it's finest.