Adventuring!

I am coming off a week of being sick (hence the blogging break).  I escaped the influenza bug when the rest of my family had it back in December, but it came out of no where and hit me hard last week.  Thankfully I am now pretty much back to normal... whatever normal is.

Yesterday was a beautiful day here.  We got school done early and headed outside for some fresh air.  The kids were trying to see who could throw the tennis ball into the top of the silo.  Tyler made it twice, but Romeo kept interrupting their game and capturing the ball when it bounced off the silo and went racing around the yard and even back into the house (if the back door was open).  In his head all tennis balls are his property.  It was pretty funny to watch the kids race to get the ball before he got to it.

After both parties gave up that game Tyler asked if we could go for a hike in the woods.  We had plenty of time before we had to leave for karate, so I said sure and we all laced up our shoes and headed to the back forty.  Romeo, not one to be left out, came along too.

Can I just say how awesome it is to walk out your back door and just start walking into the woods for an adventure.  What a blessing it is.  Truly.  First we went to the pond.  It still had quite a bit of ice on it, but it's pretty shaded back there so that makes sense.  Then we started down one of the trails and walked a ways until we came to the place where the trail disappeared beneath a pretty large area of water.  Back in my youth I would have kept right on going.  Crossing the fallen trees, jumping from dry patch to dry patch.  Now... I paused.  I didn't really want to play balance beam, but before I could say anything, my boys were half way through the obstacle course calling with huge smiles on their faces.  There was nothing I could do, but follow.

I have to admit that at one point, Tyler made a leap from a log to a dry patch and the back of his foot hit the watery mud and splashed muddy water on his pants.  I literally started saying "oh great, now what are we going to do, we have no way of washing that!" (side story, I am currently on a no laundry restriction because of septic issues... hopefully those will be taken care of tomorrow when the septic company comes).  As soon as that statement was out of my mouth, I followed up with "you know what, you are having fun, and what's a little mud on a pair of pants."  Onward we went, navigating the tricky natural obstacle course.

At one point in our hike Tyler was balancing across yet another fallen tree and he yelled "We are adventuring Mom!"  Yup buddy, that's what we are doing!

We made it through to the other side of the trail and it was time to start back towards home.  Jilli and I decided to take the long way around so as not to test our balancing skills again.  So far we didn't have wet feet and we wanted to keep it that way.  The boys decided that they wanted to adventure across the spans of water again, so we split up... girls went the dry way, boys went the wet way.

Jilli and I weren't even out of the woods yet and my phone was ringing.  I answered and it was Micah making sure Romeo was OK, because we weren't back yet.  I just had to laugh!

Just at the end of the woods, where the corn field starts there was a half dug hole.  In that hole Jilli and I saw 2 furry animals with leathery skinny tails.  They were both dead, and then just off to the left of the hole was another of those same furry animals... but I could only identify that it was a like species because of it's tail, the rest of him was missing.  There was a lot of blood.  I believe they were muskrats, but I am unsure how all three were killed in the same place and only 1 of them was half eaten.  How is that for a science lesson!!  The things we get to see living in the country!  I took a picture but I will spare you from seeing it and instead show you a picture of the back of our property. The brown grass is actually our hay field that a local farmer comes and harvests.  It is Jilli's desire that next year it will be pasture land with a horse or two grazing there (her Momma wouldn't mind seeing that as well).

Three separate times Tyler came to me later that afternoon and evening and told me how much fun our hike was.  Three times... Each time he brought it up a different way, the last time he hugged me and told me how much fun it was and thanked me for hiking with him.

There were so many other things I could have done instead of go hiking with the kids.  My house has leaves that blew in the backdoor and need to be vacuumed up.  There is lots of dirt by that backdoor too (amazing how much we track in when you don't have an attached garage to catch some of that dirt and leaves).  My kitchen never seems to be clutter free, the dust just flies around this old house like nobodies business.  Guess what... All those things are still waiting for me today.  Like my wise Mom always said... "the laundry will be there in the morning, your kids won't".  Today it is raining, today I can't go hiking with them.  I am so thankful I took the time and went yesterday and made an adventuring memory with them.

So, if you happen to stop by and my kitchen is cluttered and I still have laundry laying in piles (hopefully it isn't because of septic problems next time) and there is a layer of dust with brown crunchy leaves by my back door, you overlook those things and see the fun we are having!

One more quick side story... The big barn door was slid open last night for a late remote control helicopter flight and we discovered a bat flying in the rafters!  Good thing I got over my fear of bats while living in the city as a young girl but thats a whole other story!