An Adventure with my Boys

I love spring! I love winter too... and summer and fall, but really, I LOVE SPRING. I think it's because I just feel so rejuvenated. After a long cold winter with too much snow and not enough vacation, along comes spring with flowers everywhere, sunshine almost every day and temperatures warm enough that I don't have to worry about a jacket. The birds sing so loud it's amazing they don't need throat drops to soothe themselves. And everyone's happy. It seems no matter where I look in spring, there's happiness everywhere: in the animals, in people, in the sky. Did I mention that I love spring?

We decided to head down to the river today to search for tadpoles. Shaun and I went down there this time last year and the water lapping at the shore was thick and black with billions of tadpoles. I went armed with an empty pickle jar this year, hoping to scoop some up and bring them home. I was disappointed that there weren't any tadpoles yet - well, we did see one. Yup, one lonely tadpole. I didn't have the heart to take the only one in the whole river. Shaun and I will return in a couple weeks and hopefully all the mummy frogs will have spit out their eggs by then so I can borrow a few. Shaun's so interested in anything having to do with nature right now that Craig and I thought having tadpoles would be really cool. I just have to do some research on what to feed those tiny things. Any suggestions??

Since there weren't any tadpoles we walked a trail to a long dock jutting out into the middle of the river. Last year there was a muskrat that swam out from under the dock that nearly sent me flying into the river with surprise. The muskrat wasn't there today. Shaun figured it was out fishing. *shrug* The three of us sat on the dock in the warm sun for a while and then Craig decided to go exploring with Shaun further down the trail. They found a skeleton and deer tracks. I wish I'd gone with them. I'm fascinated by skeletons. When I was a little girl, my dad and I found a skeleton of a raccoon under a bridge by a river where I grew up and he brought it home, bleached all the flesh off the bones and glued it all back together. My brother and I had the best show and tell EVER! I still have that raccoon skeleton in a shoe box in my daycare chest, just waiting for the time when I start my own daycare in my home and can pull it out to impress all the kids.

28 weeks belly photo. The blur in the front is Shaun trying to scoot quickly in front of the camera before hearing the "click". He was too slow. Lovely.