A Walk in the Woods

Nearby, there's a "Nature Trail" -- ie, a 1/3 mile loop of spared swamp in the middle of suburbia -- and often I take the kids there to walk.  It's relaxing for me because I don't have to worry about cars, and it's more scenic than a regular walk in the neighborhood, and in 1/3 of a mile, these two find more than enough sticks, pine cones, rocks, etc to fascinate them.  That 1/3 of mile typically takes us 30 minutes to walk.

 

Anyhoo, this afternoon, I decided to take my camera along and snap a few kid pics along the trail.

 

Caleb struttin' his stuff:

 

Norah posing with a weird look on her face.  She was very proud of her outfit today (when she picked it out, she emerged from her room and asked: "Hey guys, does this look cool?"  I told her it was totally cool.  Shhhhh!  Don't tell her about not wearing white after Labor Day!), so she was actually sorta, kinda cooperative about pics.  Still, I told her to "smile natural" and I mainly got looks like this one:

Halfway through the walk, there's a long boardwalk over the swampy part, and Norah refers to this as the "Troll Bridge."  It's her favorite part.  Starting from here, she had a series of pics wherein she posed with hands on hips in each one:

Typically, Caleb gets tired toward the end of the walk, and he's not adverse to just laying down in protest.  Here, he was initially looking at some plants between the slats of the boardwalk, and then he just gave up, and was like, "Nah, I don't think I wanna walk anymore."

On the other hand, it takes a LOT to wear down Norah; here she is burning off a little extra energy:

After the boardwalk, Caleb was ready to ride, and Norah is all too happy to push him.  She often doesn't watch where she's going, though, so I have to keep steering them out of the pine needles.

At the end of the walk, there was a nice breeze, and Norah declared: "Ah! It's a nice summer day!"  I informed her that it was, in fact, fall now.

Her: "What's fall?"

Me: "Well, in other places, fall is when the temperature gets cooler and the leaves change color."

Her: "What leaves change color?"

Me: "All kinds of leaves.  They turn red, and orange, and yellow!  But, here in FL, we don't have that.  It's basically summer all year."

She thought on that for a moment and then said, "Yeah, I like summer."

Most people do, I told her.  Me?  I always miss autumn.  Come mid-September, I'd be totally willing to trade 90 degrees and green leaves for crisp temps and colorful leaves.  Enjoy it, if that's where you are!