Adventure Walk

The girls love to explore the world around them. They are facinated by the little parts of life that make everyday an adventure. Thus our walks outside have been renamed Adventure Walks. Saturday afternoon seems to creep up on us entirely too fast each week. And our grand plans for headed down town to Kaleidoscope or the City Market or Pumpkin Patch have all passed. So this week we decieded that no matter the heat that for some reason is still around we would take the girls someplace new. So it was off to the Shawnee Mission Park. The girls packed backpacks with a sack lunch and camera buddies and notepads. And we were off.

We took a nice 2 mile hike up by the lake and it was so beautiful and peaceful. But most of our fun was found just watching the girls explore the world. We taught biology lessons as we wondered around the small paths and the girls jotted down note after note, picture after picture. It was perfect.

After our walk we headed to a picnic table for a late lunch. We ate and talked and enjoyed just being together. On our way out we stopped by the park and spent another 45 minutes playing. I looked at the time and realized we only had an hour before our ward Oktoberfest started so instead of driving across town home and then back again we just hopped on over to Hen House. We picked up some food for the BBQ and spend another half hour wondering around the store as Brian raced the girls around in the cart. It is amazing how much time you can spend in the grocery store as long as your kids are in one of those totally monsterous completely embarrassing, terrible to drive car carts. But it was fun and do don't care how silly we look.

After that it was Oktoberfest full of good food and good company and then to sonic for dessert. I am in love with the half price cream slushes. I have to remind myself I am trying to get in shape everyday to keep from dashing over there for a quick fix every afternoon.

All in all it was a perfect day. There were still fights and the kids didn't go to bed like magic as we always hope for. But they were happy. We didn't spend a cent and the girls both explained.... "today was the best day ever!" So we are making our adventure walks a monthly tradition. No matter the season we are going to explore it all. And best is that we will do it together!