Thursday, June 18, 2009

into the wild

It took seven enormous ticks, two small ticks, a hundred mosquito bites, two slightly skinned knees, a lot of whining about not wanting to walk, Feathernester digging a gnat out of my right eye, an entire jar of peanuts, and one traumatically skinned hand, but S and L completed their first hike this morning. Technically, the peanuts and the skinned hand didn't happen until after the "hiking" was done, but it was part of the overall experience, so I'm counting it.

We took the girls to Montgomery Bell this morning, and we walked the Nature Loop with them. There was one incident of off-trail exploration (about ten yards of it) around a fallen tree, which was pretty exciting. We also collected lots of fallen leaves and acorn caps; saw a millipede, a lot of daddy-long-legs, and a worm; heard lots of pretty birds; hit a lot of things with sticks; and constantly looked for the monkeys that L was certain were out there somewhere (I am certain that FN and I did nothing to sever that illusion as we kept making monkey noises). S proclaimed that one of the trail markers was a fairy house, and once she even told me she saw a fairy. I must've missed it. Old lady eyes, you know.

Anyway, we are home now. Our leaves are being pressed under some cookbooks. The girls have eaten mac and cheese with peas. S's hand is bandaged and looks like someone did some major damage to her as I had to wrap tape around it to keep the band aid in place. It has been a pretty lovely day.

Oh, and to distract S from having her hand "fixed," Mellie brought her some of those little girl play high heels. We'd not let her play with them before. She loves them...and heels really do make your legs look good.

3 comments:

feather nester said...

You only forgot the slug, the hopefully-not-poisonous mushrooms, and the brief lesson in taxidermy. A resounding success. :)

Ouiser said...

ah, yes.

we saw a baby slug. L kept picking mushrooms, and we kept assuming that if they were terribly lethal they wouldn't be right along a well-traversed path at the park. when we were at the park office, the girls explored lots of dead, stuffed animals.

oh, and S kept bending over along the path, taking bites out of leaves, and telling us that she was a giraffe. I don't know whether to be proud that she noticed that giraffes eat leaves or to be mortified that she was eating leaves off undetermined vines.

Red said...

While I cringe at the nature of it all, the opportunity of seeing all those things for the first time (?)through the girls' eyes - and watching them explore, would have been enough to get me out there! Sounds like it was a blast!