oh my sweetness these boys….we are spring breaking and the blue skies are on our side. 1 of some of our days;

splitting up the days found treasures;

we went looking for bunnies and they seemed to be expecting us.  i noticed some new signs not to feed the wildlife. i never considered the older signs meant the bunnies too but i agree they are too well fed now with so many people visiting over the months in the past few years. it seems some people have gathered more than their dandelion greens and carrot tops and have been dumping the contents of their compost bins near the bunny mounds which in turn attracts more rats. ew. so we may take them a token green in the future but aim more to respect the signs and wildlife.

the red winged blackbirds seemed tame too, landing in open empty hands. the boys loved this so much and spent a good long while “tricking” the birds.

 i love this park during the cooler months. 

after a good 15 minutes Little M stood with his arms out, holding the view and declared “a new one!” meaning the beach.

a dense fog engulfed chilling us enough to set us in motion homeward.

“pick me up!”

we returned to a warm home, bath, no nap and invited Auntie L and Littlest a over for some chili and a game of Simon says.

today the boys found a shipwreck on the shore of our beach. it was in real rough shape but they worked hard at fixing it a new sail, backed it up with both modern engine and trusty oars and spent some hours out on the water tweaking the defenses with canons and auto bow and arrows…here’s to another year of adventuring and exploring, to more replies of “yes”, to softening my ego, to playing along and learning ever more from these mateys.

dreaming up a life at sea;

beach combing for useful ship parts;

life at sea;

satisfied and content;

appropriately tattooed;

Our neighbors are so awesome! This weekend the boys and i were down the road swinging on one of the many neighborhood swings when the folk next door passed us by with their new rake. T’is the season. Next thing i know they are out there raking up our front lawn that is was full of giant soggy horse chestnut leaves and they did a better job all at once than i ever have! There’s a lot of rakes scraping the walkways these days, ours included. The heaps at some of the intersections are like barricades and the bulldozers continue to pile them higher for the dump trucks to haul off and away. It’s rather exciting to see from our front window, in our yard and on our walks; The leaves are coming down! chestnut, maple, gingko, oak… Today Little M excitedly pointed out to me that there are just 6 red maple leaves left hanging on our tree. It will be awhile still and some windy days before the Japanese maple is left bare but they too are coming down. They make a smaller pile and they were mostly dry this beautiful, sunny day so the little ones delighted in piling, scattering, riding bikes through, belly flopping and burying into while i played around with a rediscovered forgotten lens.

i’ll take more of these mild Autumn days all through November please.