Toyless

Yesterday, we had K3 and Toad over to this little place here.  I had spent some time with them two weeks prior, but at that time, DH was out of town for the weekend, so it had been nearly a month since he'd had a chance to see them.

Mid-week last week, everything here had been wet, wet, wet, after warm weather and torrential rains brought us several inches of rain on top of quickly melting snow from the approximately one foot of snow we got while DH was out of town.  Thankfully, by Friday it appeared that most of the frost had gone out of the ground, because the water levels and flooding around this little place here went down drastically.  By yesterday afternoon, you could actually walk across our field without fear of losing your footwear in the mud.  As a bonus, the sun came out!

So, what did we do with the grandkids?  We put on coats, hats and mud boots, and we trekked out to the woods!  Actually, DH had gone out on the 4-wheeler about fifteen minutes before they arrived, with the intentions to cut down some of the widow makers that were hanging over the woods road from this winter's storms.  Once the kids had been dropped off here for the afternoon, and changed into their boots, K3, Toad and I headed out to find Grandpa.  There was quite a wind blowing from the west, which, according to Toad, "blew us across the field so we could get to the woods faster".  Inside the woods, it was quite a bit calmer, and we set to following the 4-wheeler tracks and listening for the sound of the chainsaw to help us determine which part of the woods DH could be located in.

He was, of course, found in pretty much the opposite corner of the woods from where we had come in. The kids were so intent on following the sound of the chainsaw, that they didn't seem to mind the quarter mile trek. And, once they found him, their attention turned more to climbing the nearby hill and looking down into the neighbors drainage ditch to see how full of water it was.

They ended up spending about two hours out in the woods, and probably wandered well over a mile following deer trails--looking for shed antlers, which we never did find, climbing over or ducking under fallen trees, as well as using many more fallen trees as balance beams, or bridges across large puddles, or climbing up a huge blown over but leaning beech tree to see how high off the ground they could go (about 6-7 feet).  The smiles on those faces were huge.

They found turkey tail feathers, learned to identify poison ivy vines clinging to tree trunks, picked acorn caps out of the leaf litter under an oak tree--debating whether it was a deer or a squirrel that had eaten the acorns, and just generally had a ball exploring outside without a toy in sight.