what a view!

Charlie is a typical 5 year old boy. His legs go faster than his sense of balance can handle, so he manages to fall or trip every 10 feet. Maggie doesn’t have the same excuse since most 6 year old girls exhibit a little more grace. Both children’s legs are currently covered with bruises and nasty cases of poison ivy. Today’s outing didn’t improve their looks in our attempt to hike to the top of a nearby mountain.

After befriending the world’s biggest black Labrador Retriever (he put his face in the window of my full-size van to say hi), we walked up a rocky road beside a blueberry field

before scrambling up quarter-acre size rock faces and sitting down to eat our picnic lunch. We fended off the now hungry dog, the deer flies, and no-see-ums, eating our sandwiches in record time so we could pick wild blueberries and drink down limeade. The view was just incredible with woods and farms spread out before us and the river off to the east. I promised the kids that we could bring binoculars the next time so we could find the exact location of our farm.

Between sweating just from carrying Julia Ellen in the sling and holding Timmy’s hand I had my hands full and just gasped when I saw Maggie trip on a rock in front of me and see half the bag of cheese popcorn go flying through the air in a beautiful arc. Her arm and leg were bleeding (luckily it wasn’t the knee that had been cut so badly last week that if we lived closer to the ER we would have gotten stitches) and she tried to make everyone else miserable all the way back to the car.

Just to add to the sweat and ickiness of our hike, when it came time for drying off after baths I noticed Charlie messing with himself. He said, “Is this a tick?” and sure enough there was one right THERE. While I did flinch at first, I managed to get it off and flushed down the potty.