Our Willow Tree

We have the most beautiful willow tree in our front yard. It has grown so much the past 4 years that you almost can't see our front door anymore when you're coming down the street. We live in an area that gets it's fair share of rain, so the willow tree is great in soaking up all of the excess water.

My favorite thing about the tree is that it never stops moving. Even when the air seems still, the long branches seems to move ever so slightly. When it's very windy or during the storm, the branches flop all over the place whip through the air. The boys love to walk through the branches and pretend they're in the jungle.

I absolutely love our tree in late afternoons. We have 27 windows in this house and I keep the blinds open on every one of them every day to let the natural light in. In the late afternoon, we get the most beautiful shadows from those branches blowing in the wind all over our floors and walls. It's so relaxing and peaceful.

Playing at the local park

I am sure, all over America, cities small and large have local parks. Kids have been going to parks for many many years and I'm sure this tradition will continue on for the foreseeable future. We have a couple of parks in our city and we've visited them from time to time, but we definitely have a favorite park that we visit 90% of the time.

We found this park about 3 years ago and it's located 7 miles from our home. The park has 4 separate play areas. The main play area is a pirate ship with a set of swings. Not far from that is a jungle gym (with no benches for the parents). This playground doesn't get near the traffic that the pirate area does, but it butts up against a field of goats and horses and the kids love to try to woo them over to the fence. The third area is located about half a mile away (all within the big park) and is on the other side of a pavilion, so it's not noticeable from the road. This one RARELY has any traffic and is a small area with just a slide and some swings. Our favorite area is across the river on the least visited part of the park and it's a playground made of a wooden jungle gym with two slides. There's also two swing sets and two see-saws. Near the play area is a pavilion. In the 3 years we've visited this area, we have never once seen another child playing on this playground.

The area has many pine trees, so there are always a lot of dried pine needles on the ground, which the boys love to use for building forts. It's so wonderful to go there because they always have the entire area to themselves. We see people drive into the park and pass right by it to go to other areas, but no one ever stops to play here.

I took the boys there one day last week after school and we stayed for 2 hours until it got dark and had the most fun.

I hope no one else ever discovers our secret park :).

A day of hiking!

Last weekend, Ward and I took the boys to hike at a nearby State Park. We love going to state parks and decided a couple of years ago to make that our family hobby. We started in the fall of 2008 when the boys were 3 and 5 and have since taken them to 6 state parks in our area. We've been cabin-camping once and tent camping once and we've had so much time.

Since Ward spent the summer recovering from his knee surgery, we haven't done much in the past 7 months, but we finally got to go hiking about 9 days ago. We went to a park we hadn't been to in about a year and a half and had lunch at the lodge there (which we had never done before). Ward's knee wasn't quite up to the hike, so he drove around and visited the look-outs while I took the boys on a short hike to see some caves. The lunch was delicious and we were surprised to find out they were rebuilding the lodge and the restaurant would soon be closed down for a year and a half.

We were lucky to get to eat there when we did. We went to see a waterfall that the park is famous for, but since it's been so dry around here lately, there was no water! We let the boys play on the playground for a bit and then headed home after spending about 4 hours at the park. They were exhausted and slept the whole way home. Great day!

A Trip to the Zoo

As a reward for good grades, I took the boys to the big City Zoo and then to a local diner and to a bookstore.

We had the best day! The zoo was relatively dead since it was the middle of a school day, but the boys were out for parent/teacher conferences, so I figured this was the best day to go. We saw almost every single animal they had. It was a beautiful day, so all of the animals were out and active. We even rode the little train! We stayed for about 2.5 hours and then we went to the bookstore where they spent their allowance. Wally bought a new Lego game and Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 and Beaver bought a remote control car and a Magic Treehouse book about pirates.

After that, we walked over to the diner and had burgers and ice cream. Both boys kept telling me all day how this was "the best day EVER". I really enjoyed spending time with them and making more great memories. Plus, I LOVE going to the bookstore and definitely wrote down a few things I want for Christmas!

Is it time to go RVing?

Ward and I have been talking about getting a pop-up camper or a travel trailer for some time. We first started looking around February of 2008, when I first learned I was losing my job. It was odd to be looking to spend money when our income was going to decrease, but it's something we researched pretty heavily.

I will say, when you go to see these things in person, it's very tempting to buy. They are nice and cozy and look like big "forts". We ultimately decided to buy a big tent instead and start there. We reasoned that if we used the tent enough and really enjoyed camping, we could always upgrade. Unfortunately, our tent is now almost 2 years old, and except for putting it up in the backyard about 3 times, we've never used it.

We decided that the kids were too young that first summer since Beaver was only three, so we were going to wait until this past summer of 2009 to get started. Well, it rained the ENTIRE month of June, so that was out, and on top of that we had to make up all of our baseball games in July so that month was out, too. Then August came and we had to go back to school. We planned to go camping in the fall, but we got overwhelmed with Cub Scouts, Fall baseball, church activities, carnivals, etc. and didn't make it out there.

We are determined to dive into our family hobby whole-heartedly this spring and summer and discussions of a travel trailer have come up again.

We're going to look this weekend!

Do you have a travel trailer? If so, what has been your experience with it

Trips to Home Depot

There's something about Home Depot that really gets my home improvement juices flowing. When I walk in there, I immediately want to reorganize the closets, build a shed, add a bonus room, paint the walls, and build some bookshelves.

We had to go in there today for a bucket and some weather-stripping for our back door, but the whole time I was in there, all I could think about was their beautiful gardening section. I really wanted to buy every plant in there and go home and re-landscape our yard. The problem? I have no green thumb and know next to nothing about gardening.

For years I've said I was going to plant a garden and grow some summer vegetables, but I always put it off because I worked and I knew I couldn't tend to it. Now that I can tend to one, we have a 7 month old Lab puppy that chews everything to shreds. So, I know that's not an option.

Do any of you garden? What do you do about pet invasion?