Vacation Day Nine

After a leisurely "up and at 'em", my brother led us to a local nature preserve not far from their house.  We chose the 1 1/2 mile loop down near the creek and the walk was beautiful, except that Sari really would have been much happier with the 1 mile walk. 

Look closely-you can see TJ up there on the rock striking a statue-like pose.

There's Mimi in the middle of all that green...

The last 1/2 mile was long, and full of whining.  "I can't walk one more step" was what she repeated over and over...sometimes while walking...sometimes while sitting...sometimes with me threatening bodily harm all sorts of consequences (just KIDDING).   At one point, her uncle came and saved her...but that didn't last long.

While she was taking her leisurely time,

my brother tried to teach the kids to do bird calls with your hands.  Scott and Mimi did pretty well.  TJ found he could make a great Donald Duck sound, and decided to stop with that ;-).

We came home from the hike with a few "hitchhikers".  Yep!  More ticks!  Scott pulled 5 off his socks, and that night I took one off his body (which also prompted the need for a full body search...very awkward now that he's 14 and daddy was hundreds of miles away).  I had 2 ticks on me also!  Ewwww, it gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it, let alone having to pull them off.  I'd love nature, if it wasn't for all the critters.  If you are keeping score, that brings out tick total to 9 and our leech total to 1.

For dinner, we took pizzas to the house of a girl Sheila works with.  They just put in a large in-ground pool...by themselves.  They also are building a barn...by themselves.  Their property was gorgeous, and they have chickens and fruit trees, and berry bushes, and an amazing old house.  Anyway, everybody swam, and I took a ton of pictures of her flowers :-).  This was the first pool my kids have been in with a diving board...and it also had a slide!

The Fearless Aunt Sheila

That's TJ on the slide, but Sari is climbing the ladder...with a tube around her...and Aunt Sheila at the bottom to catch her!