Nature Outtings

Me and the kids head over to our favorite trails close to us a lot during the summer. It's just the place you can load the shoeless kids in the car wearing whatever they are wearing (or NOT wearing)......and it's JUST US!

It's kinda our little place under the bridge. Brooks says he thinks the river is super dirty.......WHAT WOULD EVER GIVE HIM THAT IDEA?!?!?

But we figure if it's clean enough for these fish, it's clean enough for us!

Ready.......set.........JUMP!!!!

Okay, okay, so there's random tires and litter around! But we still like it. Iris calls it the "sparkly river" since it's sparkles (ya know.....with littered beer cans and pop cans and stuff)

The boys made a "dam" and used that to "mine" for their little fish. They usually catch around 20 so it's kinda exciting for them.

My job is to keep an eye on her......which on this day didn't turn out to be too hard.

However it proved a LOT more difficult to keep an eye on these mini frogs they caught. I was under STRICT instructions to not let them escape, so they required my full attention.

We also hike around the trails

We have a saying while we hike that "we're only as fast as our slowest person".....which is usually always Kellyn.

And when Kellyn doesn't meet their "speed" standards, one of them will come back and carry her for a while. (she's so spoiled). The rule is ALSO if the babies are losing it, then we turn around and go home.....so the older ones will do ANYTHING to keep them happy. haha

I don't know why, but I just love this picture of my kids.....all 8, dirty, in nature, and mostly without shoes......and they are ALL MINE!

Everly has to hike on my hip. She does okay since she has her fist and thumb to keep her busy. (The kids have been wondering which finger/fingers she would pick to suck on. The other week Iris came so excited yelling, "She picked a finger! She picked a finger!!! She's like Royce and picked her thumb!" Actually sometimes she does the thumb/index finger combo like Kellyn did)

Iris totally biffed it in the mud

And then Kellyn starts getting REALLY sleepy and the boys are still determine to hike, so here is what happens.

The walking makes Everly fall asleep too

Another time I was watching my friends' two kids and we brought them here too.

We found this awesome tree hanging over the river that the boys liked to jump from.

We played on that tree, jostled it and were really loud on it. As we were wading up the river to leave we looked into the branches and found this HUGE (biggest I've seen anyway) hornets nest.!!!!

Holy cow, that would've been bad.