The kids have a full week of fall break here. I was very excited to not get up quite so early each day (so lazy I know, but true)! Anyway, I would have probably gone up to visit Grandma, but we had done that two weeks previous. I let each of the kids plan a dinner to make with me for one of the days (they love love cooking with me) and also they got to each pick a treat to make with me one of the days. Aubrey is getting really good at cooking and pretty much made her meal all on her own (and passed off an Activity Days goal doing so).
It is still pretty hot here, but I am so anxious to enjoy the outdoors and have my kids enjoy the outdoors (probably partly due to feeling crowded and messy when we are home all day). So we went on a bike ride to the preserve. It's about 1.5 miles away just to get to it, so I wondered how my kids would do. It was actually really fun and they did great. Jonathan got pretty tired on the ride home, but we ended up going about 5 miles total, so he really did awesome. It took us a while to actually find the ponds that were full right now, so we didn't get to see much at the preserve before it got too hot. But on our way to the preserve we go through the irrigated/farm animal lots and see horses, cows, chickens. That always excites my kids. There is a particular lot that has pigs, mules, tortoises, goats, sheep, and lots of birds and other small animals. The kids loved petting the mules and goats and for the first time we got to actually see a tortoise super close and it was eating watermelon. That was pretty neat! They also love to see the huge fish in the canal and gather shells along the edge of the canal (don't ask why there are shells, I have no idea, but there are).
The next day we just took it easy, wore pj's, did some sewing and our own projects or whatever we wanted. So we headed out, all of us
on our bikes, in matching yellow shirts. We wanted to also go to the
library and get some books and DVD's (the library is just past the
preserve). We looked at the area on a map before we left this time and had a better idea of how to get to where we wanted to go. We found that there is a nice lake right next to the library (between the library and the preserve)! We saw so many birds and we also saw several bunnies and a turtle! Aubrey and Mariah also got to get their own library cards-which they were so excited about! The kids did really well again on their bikes and I really enjoyed being out with them all on our bikes enjoying the outdoors!
