The First Day of Spring

I took the kids on an exploring walk on Friday evening because it was in the 50s and the light was beautiful.  I carried Nathaniel in the Baby Bjorn, and I swear he's gained 10lbs since I last carried him.  Plus, he was wearing his shoes and he kicked my thighs so much that I have bruises.  But anyway, it was nice to be able to carry him on the walk because he could not have kept up walking on the fields and through the prairies.  The girls picked which way they wanted to walk, and they asked me to turn on my map app so that they could see the crazy path we walked - our walks are not as interestingly shaped as Christy's are.  When we got to the corner of one field, I could see a herd of deer at the far edge of the field.  This must be the herd of deer that we have seen signs of during our past walks, and we were curious how many there were.  They were pretty far away, but we counted at least seven.

The girls wanted to sneak up on the deer, so here they are tiptoeing across the field.  Whispering loudly while they are tiptoeing, of course.  They got about 15 feet closer to the deer, and then the deer turned and ran about 20 feet further away.  When the deer ran, they scared off what looked like three sandhill cranes, which flew across the field and landed in another marshy area.

The ground wasn't too muddy and the girls had fun climbing over logs.

As we walked back across the prairie, the girls found three pussy willow trees, and a whole bunch of milkweed pods with milkweed fluff still in them.  They enjoyed pulling the milkweed fluff out and throwing it in the air like snow.

Nathaniel took his very first selfie:

And here's Nathaniel looking slightly happier.  He held onto that little pussy willow twig the whole rest of our walk.

I guess we can't take the shortcut right across the pond anymore...

And we finished up by walking backwards through our sneaky back way path.  The girls brought home pine cones, cattails, pussy willow twigs, pine needles, bark, and milk weed pods.  I don't know what we're going to do with them all, but it was a fantastic nature exploring walk.  And now it's cold again.