Adventures. Or not.

I am an amazing parent, filled to the brim with exciting ideas to keep 2 little boys engaged and busy and of course, learning!  Every day is packed with arts & crafts, blowing bubbles, and bike rides to the park!  Cue the rainbow and unicorns!  Cue the fairy tale music!  Cue the flying pigs!!  

Yeesh.  A girl can dream, right?  Typically holidays, minor ones included, provide oodles of prime activity fodder.  Even the most uninspired mom can Google "St. Patrick's Day fun", or at least serve up green milk for breakfast.  Yesterday actually WAS St. Paddy's Day but my children didn't get any green milk.  I wonder if they even got any breakfast.  hmmmm.  Anyway, I did manage to get us all dressed and out the door somewhere close to noonish with the grand idea that we should journey out to the local archaeological and natural history preserve.  Whoa!  Did I just see a unicorn?!  Oh yeah.

This was our first trip out there.  In years past I'd just never been brave enough to try it.  I figured active excavation sites + ancient artifacts + 2 little boys  = bad idea.  But, the boys are growing up and tend toward pleasantness more than heathenism these days, so off we went.  The visitor/education center has a quaint little museum then outside there are about 3 miles of nature trails to explore.  Score! 

Here's Jaden observing a spider he spotted.  You might note that this momma was not observing with him nor helping him identify said spider.  She was several feet back using the max amount of zoom on the camera to snap a pic, ready to stomp anything that skittered by.  I don't do spiders.  Just call me nature girl.

The spider was just about the only critter we saw.  There was apparently a stink bug, but Jaden squashed it.  Oh, and we saw one bird.  And an airplane. 

It's still wintery enough that there wasn't even a sprig of green poking through the dirt.  Nothing but dead/dormant scrub as far as the eye could see.  But there WERE rocks!  Rocks, rocks, and more rocks.  Thanks to the good Lord for miles of never-ending caliche.   

Here Grant's got a dead gourd and Jaden's carrying a monster sized rock which he's intent on taking home.

Insert minor meltdown here when I tell him this is a preserve protected by the state and he can't take it.  What was that I was saying about pleasantness?

Oh well.  At least we got some fresh air and sunshine.  There was nary a cloud in sight, and after the raining slush on Monday, that big blue sky was worth the day's efforts.