Happy Birthday to Our Big One Year Old!

 Happy Birthday Quentin!

Hiking The Plotter Kill Preserve

We took another soggy hike today!  The rain made things wet and muddy, but everything was green and absolutely beautiful!  

 We found TONS of Red Spotted Newts!

John at the top of a 60' waterfall.  I wouldn't get any closer to the edge, I was having panic attacks : )  Heights are so not my thing!

Here's my great idea of a "short cut".  Straight up the side of the gorge.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I've decided it wasn't one of my better ideas.  We were holding on to tree roots and crawling on all fours to get up since it was so steep.  John kept saying he'd been through worse, but I had to remind him it was never with three little kids before.  However, we all made it : )  I was super proud of my boys for just billy goating it up to the top without any tears even though they both got scared.  I wish the pictures turned out better, so you could see how steep it was (and how crazy it was to drag three kids up that), but here's John and Porter getting to the top of the hill.

Thankfully, we all lived to blog about it : )

Spring 2013 Family Pictures

Photographer's website: Ellen Elizabeth Photography

She was fabulous!

Indian Ladder Trail

I've been dying to get out and do some exploring now that the weather is nice.   John had a free day today, meaning NO homework and NO work, woo hoo!  So today was the perfect day to get out and go on an adventure.  True, it was raining off and on, but that wasn't going to stop us, because like I tell my kids, "You won't melt if you get wet, you're not a witch."  Although, we did take the kid's rain jackets just in case . . . it would be very sad if they melted.

We hiked the Indian Ladder Trail @ John Thacher State Park.  As you can see, it was beautiful!  I think the rain scared most people off, so we had the place all to ourselves.

The kids thought it was really cool they got to walk underneath a waterfall : )

 Check out this gross (to me)/cool (to the boys) bug we found!  

I told Gabe this was the first time I'd seen a woodpecker up close and he said he'd seen one before.  I asked him where.  To which he replied, "Woody the Wood Pecker on TV."  Sorry buddy, but that's not the same as seeing the real thing.

 

After our hike we stopped for some ice cream.  To say Porter was a mess would be an understatement.  The child was covered with chocolate from head to toe.  And no he didn't have an ouchie on his forehead, he just wanted a Star Wars bandaid, I think he had one on his bellybutton too, because as you know, those get injured a lot.

And that's the end of our adventure (for today).