Exploring Wildness

Come on a walk with us!We live so close to spaces that are wild.

These girls love to see, with fresh eyes, the incredible intricacy of the beauty that is around us.

They love to walk through it, be surrounded by it.

Explore it freely.

Feel it under their feet.

Hug it.
Learn the balance of their body.

Embrace the wildness around them with all of who they are.


Can you see where our house is?

So close, and yet we felt so far from the environment of sidewalks, mown grass and playground equipment that actually surrounds our home. All fun in their own time, but important to leave, as well.


What do you hear, Anna? What do you see?

Where will this trail lead? Let's find out!

Run across the bridge! What do you see in the water flowing beneath your feet?

Ruthie, the fearless leader.

We're in a fort made of trees! That one is the chimney!

Look at where we are! Three fearsome mountain lions, stopping along the trail.

Tubing Boulder Creek with Nora

Nora came with us on an adventure to the library today, and, like any good adventure, this adventure involved water play. Tubing on Boulder Creek, to be exact.

Nora, relaxin' on the ride:And the not-so-relaxing part:

Perfect little girl sized tubing environs. The creek is low enough that at its deepest it was knee high on Nora. Not that the rest of her body didn't get wet. She's that kind of girl.

Taking turns in the tube:

Lots of big smiles:

Here's my cool picture of the day! On accident, of course.

Then Nora floated in the tube all the way home to our house from the library (almost, except for the parts I made her get out and walk around). I loved the huge grin on her face the whole way, and Anna running along the bank next to her cheering her on! Anna was jealous and says it's her turn next time. As long as the creek stays this low, Anna! We arrived home with one shivering, smiling Nora and three little munchkins talking all at once telling Michelle all about our adventure. Thanks for adventuring with us today, Nora!

Fall Treasure Walk

With treasure bags in hand we set out today looking for fall treasures. We headed first towards a new picnic spot the girls wanted to eat at that we had seen on our walk yesterday, a large rock 'table' of sorts. We passed under a raucous flock of crows by the creek, tromped through as many crunchy leaves as we could find, ran down a slope of colorful leaves, found sticks, acorns, rocks and lots of beautiful leaves, threw things in the creek, saw some trout in the creek close to the surface of the water and watched their strange behavior for a while (one kept 'attacking' another one', Anna said they must be friends), touched, hugged and smelled almost as many trees as we passed under, crawled into a culvert, saw our swimming hole-now much deeper with all the rain and snow we've had- listened to the wind in the tops of the trees, felt the warm sunshine on our skin, made Ruthie laugh, and generally had a good time. We spread out our treasures on the grass once we got home so we could look at what we had found:

Then we went inside, some to nap and some to craft with their treasures.