Last Beautiful Day of Fall: Take 2

Ok, so we thought that November 1st was going to be the last beautiful day of fall. Turns out yesterday (the 6th) was another one. Jared already had plans to attend the last ISU paintball practice of the year, and I really wanted to go into town to pick up some library books we had on hold, as well as our pottery pieces we had painted earlier in the week. With 3 hours between dropping Jared off and the library and pottery place opening, Emma and I went for a hike. Sadly, our first of the year.

I have wanted to take Emma hiking, but with Jared's school class load, we haven't been able to get it scheduled. I was too nervous to take Emma on my own. I mean, what would happen if I fell and broke my leg, or suddenly lost consciousness, or got attacked by a bear?!?

Considering the type of hiking, my health, and the area we would most likely hike in, none of these are really likely. Possible, but not likely.

So, on Saturday, when we realized that it was suppose to be pretty nice out on Sunday, I decided Emma and I would go for a hike while Jared played paintball.

Sunday morning, Emma was really excited to go for a hike and kept asking if it was time to leave yet. Finally, we headed into town. Emma and I dropped Jared off then stopped at the outdoor place and picked up a cheap, super loud whistle (you know, just in case), then headed for the woods.

It was chilly walking through the prairie grass with nothing to stop the wind. 

We chased quite a few of these little hoppers.

A hole in a tree. 

I would have loved to have been able to miniaturize ourselves and take a tour of this little critter home.

Once we had hiked a bit, and got into the trees, we were a lot warmer.

The letter "Y"- I sense a future theme

A leaf "as big as Da's face!"

I didn't take very many pictures, but I am really proud of myself anyway. I typically like to rush Emma when we are walking. Even if we have no where to go. I really want to stop doing that, and I am happy to say that for all by the last 15 minutes of our hike, I was able to repress the, "Ok, let's go" comment from popping out of my mouth. After the first two tongue bitings, I began to relax and just enjoy the atmosphere and company. 

The reason for the slight rush during the last 15 minutes? We got lost, and instead of an hour long hike, it ended up being an hour and 45 minutes. And we still needed to get to the library and the pottery place before we had to pick Jared up. We still really enjoyed the last 15 minutes, even though we were both tired. That is when we saw most of the animal prints (that I should have taken pictures of).

We had made plans ahead of time to stop for some hot coco after our hike while we waited for the library and the pottery place to open. Thankfully, we had finished up our hike and gotten back to town with 15 minutes to go before everything opened. Just enough time for hot coco and tiramisu. 

She thought it looked yummy and wanted to try it. Turns out she really liked it, and I didn't. Lucky her :)

I couldn't get over how cute she looked sipping her hot coco from the mug almost as big as her face, so I took a bunch of pictures. Almost as many as I took while hiking. 

Yes, I am a dork, and it is a great thing to be :)

Last Beautiful Day of Fall

I did a pathetic job this summer of getting us out of the house and into nature. My excuse is bugs. They love Emma. We had to implement a 3 bite rule, which meant that after I noticed 3 angry red bumps on her, it was time to head in. Unfortunately it never took very long to get those bumps.  Sometimes I would even pull out the nasty DEET spray, which we hated to use, but they would still bite her.

Anyway, now that the weather has turned colder, we have been outside more.

On the first day of November, while some people were suffering through massive snow, we had a beautiful day in the 70's. We went for a bike ride.

Actually, they biked, I walked. 

Beavers at work

A fun beaver slide

Jared on his BMX bike.  

Emma going off-road

Queen of the Rock Pile

Glad we took the time to enjoy the beautiful day.

An Interesting Discovery

 As we were waiting for the cheesy crackers to bake the other day, Emma and L (the little man we babysit) wanted to play with dough.

All I had in the house was the expensive whole wheat stuff, and a large ziplock bag of odd random flours from when we tried cutting gluten for medically experimental reasons.

So, out came a big bowl and a two smaller ones. I dumped in the odd flours (I believe it was rice flour and tapioca flour? not sure exactly). I also set out a mason jar of water for each of them.

They each scooped a bunch (it is a technical measurement term in our house) of the four mix into their own bowls. 

Water was added

And mixing commenced.

"Mama, this kinda feels like oobleck!" (I thought I had blogged about oobleck before but I can't find it, so here is a cool post about it instead)

 "Really?" -pokes finger in goo- "Hey, it does! That is really cool that we made oobleck without corn starch."

Food coloring was added. Pink for Emma and blue for L.

L was really enjoying the gooeyness and Emma was really enjoying sharing it with him.

"L, try to punch it!" giggles as he hits it and he finds that the surface is hard. "Now slowly poke your finger in it." More giggles. Best way to wait for something to finish baking :)

Drippy fun

I asked, "L, do you know what happens if you mix pink and blue?" He wasn't sure so we added a bit of Emma's and a bit of L's to a mason jar and stirred. As best oobleck can be stirred. It turned out to be a light purple :)

"I want purple!" More food coloring added.

"Me too!" 

Everybody had a good time, and the cheesy crackers came out great!