Backyard Exploring

We have had such awesome fall weather that the kids have had more chances to explore outdoors. The summer was pretty great, but we had an abnormally high bee (wasp, yellow jacket, etc.) population so the children were not excited about playing outside. However, with the cooler (but not cold!) fall weather the bees seem to have fled and the children are willing to go back outdoors.

One afternoon recently Kara told the kids to go in the backyard and scavenge outward into the 40 acres of wetlands that our homeowners' association owns to find the small stream they had found last summer. From the stream they were supposed to collect some pond water for examination under a microscope.

They took off on their own, but after a while I decided to go check on them and see how their mission was going. They hadn't found the stream or if they had, it was just a trickle. They weren't willing to collect the water because they said it was too dirty. !!! I collected a small sample for them. Bentley found a few low bush cranberries. They had a good time.