Well the last few weeks have been an adventure for the Hales! Just not exactly one we ever want to repeat again. Not long after my last post, I discovered (quite painfully) that I had gallstones. So on July 7th, I ended up having my gallbladder removed. Needless to say last week there was not much happening around the Hale house as I rested and recovered from outpatient surgery. Blessed by lots of prayers and with a good recovery and great friends bringing us meals, I am much more mobile and getting more active everyday and we were able to have some fun adventures this week.
For Liam, he once again ventured into the world of Nature Nymphs Mini Camp at Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve where he learned about animal babies! Ms. Angela was amazing as always and he had fun everyday and today even brought home a plant for us to put outside to attract caterpillars and watch them go through metamorphosis and become a butterfly (I will try to take pictures of what happens and may even have the makings of a later post . . .)
For Graeme and I, we spent our time together the first two days running errands, reading and looking for dinosaurs in the mall (okay, just at the Lego Store). The final two days we decided to go out nature adventuring ourselves in the preserve. Each day we took a different trail and a different type of nature adventure as you will see!
Our first day's theme became "Fungus Among Us". We hiked the trail that took us down the bluffs and into the floodplains of the preserve. We saw young toadlets hopping, yellow-spotted millipedes were everywhere and the mushrooms and fungi were in full force.
This picture is to show a little scale to how big some of the mushrooms are growing!
Stinkhorn (one of my favorites :-)
After having a good time with on the trail with a fun"gi", We picked up Liam and had a picnic at the new tables on the new children's nature trail. The boys of course had to play after we were done!
You might be able to guess from Graeme's shirt what our second day of adventures was going to be all about. Yes, we took the boys' T-rex toy out for a walk in the park and took some pictures of boy and beast enjoying nature. (Please note that in all of our adventures we were responsible patrons and obeyed all the rules of the trail-mom, boy and dinosaur all remained on trail at all times)
Hmm-fungi-that means something must be decaying nearby-maybe dinner?
What would you do if you saw a dinosaur in the woods?
Enjoying the overlook, the best place to look out and see what's moving in the forest.
Everybody needs a rest after a walk in the woods
Some animals just don't care that a vicious predator is lurking nearby
ROARRRR!
Liam even got into the dinosaur action after camp as the T-rex visited the children's nature trail.
So glad to be back adventuring and being active with the boys! We can't wait to return to the park next week for Graeme's turn in camp.
