Unplugged Sundays

What I miss most about the school year is making time on a regular basis for our family to be together for the day doing something outdoors.  It feels so good to be out there.  My mind is clear, my soul soars and I can breathe, deeply, evenly, just breathe.

I want this for beyond the summer.  But how do we hang onto this?   The weekends are so short during the school year and are filled up with just as many important activities, get togethers and daily chores.  I imagine it takes a really strong committment...an iron clad one.  It would have to be written in

stone  or for us, the family calendar. What could we committ to? Ideally Sundays would be nice but could we do every Sunday? Might need to start smaller, perhaps 2 Sundays a month?  I need to think this through some more, back to this hike.

Today was a lovely summer day. We hit Russian Ridge for a morning hike.  The kids did well.  They have endless energy but sometimes on long hikes, esp my littlest, encouragement is needed.  They carried their own backpacks, with hat, water bottle and snack. We stop often, to look at treasures found too, which helps.

This preserve offers many smaller loops that are doable for younger children.  My favorite here is touring the pond and watching for frogs or bunnies in the grasses.  We decided to take another trail today that lead us away from the pond.  It was a little warmer out in the open then we were used to, but I'm happy to say my kids did great.  There were lots of finds along the way, banana slugs in the forest, lizards on the hot rocks, ground squirrels, all kinds of bugs, esp. ticks.  Many checks after our hike.  Boys especially love finding the perfect stick.  Bubba could carry back an armload if we let him as there are so many sticks he falls in love with.  There are sticks for walking, sticks that make good tools and of course, sticks that make good swords. 

It was pretty brown on our hike and we looked forward to small spots of color. This was such a happy splash of sunshine on our walk. The kids are naturally drawn to them, the state flower in California...the poppy

Big daddy on our last hike mentioned he would really like to see a snake in person. Now, I'm happy he has really gotten into our hikes and has things he wants to discover too, but I must admit I froze a bit when he threw that lovely wish out to the Universe.  Be careful what you wish for, the Universe does have a way of granting said wishes.  We naturally spotted a snake on our last hike and on this hike the little fellow below gave us quite a fright as we almost sat down on him during our snack time. There was a bend in the road with a lovely bit of shade from a lone tree. Well this guy was enjoying the shade as well and came right on out to greet us.  Amazingly, we all jumped up quite fast and moved down a ways.  Always important to look around

closely before sitting down. 

My favorite moment on this hike was Boy Wonder offering his hand to Busy Girl when she felt she was too tired to go on.

After our hike we had good intentions of heading down the road to Alice's.  There aren't many restaurants in the area but even still, this can be a fun spot with good food.  It's at the corner ot two country hwys and it's fun to people watch here. Very diverse and interesting crowd can be found here.  From mountain bike riders to motorcycles riders to sports car drivers.  It's very popular though, and the service can be a bit unhand holding when it's busy.  Unfortunately, it was too busy today and we grudgingly moved on.  We continued on Hwy 9 for quite a while and eventually found ourselves down in Felton.

I have a lot of fond memories of Felton from my childhood.  We used to camp here every summer with friends.  I'm always happy to return and look around. 

We eventually ate and walked over to the park with the historic covered bridge.  The park included a playground and it was nice to run and climb and burn off the energy gained from lunch.

Here is Felton's historic Covered Bridge.  Through it's only used for pedestrians now,  it's still considered to be the tallest covered bridge in the country.   Now that's pretty cool!                                                               The kids were pretty much beat after this. We piled back in the car and Big Daddy and I had a very enjoyable and hand holding drive back home.  The three littles were all passed out in the back. Now that is my kind of unplugged Sunday. 

Three things I'm Grateful For:

1) A free Sunday

 2) A little hand holding

3) Chocolate covered donuts on the ride home

The Great Backyard Campout

The kids have been planning a campout forever.  To celebrate the end of their week long camp and also to support The Great American Backyard Campout

 we pitched a tent in the backyard, roasted hotdogs and corn on the cobb and of course smores. 

We slept outside in the tent 2 nights in a row.  It was already up and of course the kids were so excited the first night they didn't sleep quite as well as the second night.  It was a beautiful clear night...the crickets were in full swing and of course the wild dogs in the neighborhood could be heard too.

The great thing about putting up the tent...they played and slept in it for hours.  We sure enjoyed a quite morning to ourselves both days.  We do hope to camp beyond the backyard this summer, but for now, this was nice too.

Three things I'm grateful for:
1.  Sleeping kids in the backyard
2. Warm cups of coffee
3.  The summer still far ahead of us

First day of summer...

Ah...that was worth waiting for.  Gotta love being able to sleep in and make a hot breakfast other than oatmeal for a change.  The summer is looking good already.

Three Things I'm grateful for:
1. Sunny mornings
2. Huge homemade breakfast
3. First day of camp