Thursday, July 28, 2011

creek wandering

















Although I firmly believe that children (and adults too!) should spend time outside every day, some days when it's in the 90s for days on end and the humidity is high and 9 am feels oppressively sticky already, it can be hard to find the motivation to find somewhere to explore the outdoors. It is then that I'm thankful for the many shady creeks in our area, especially the one in the local park where all the poison ivy is cleared away and the water is never deeper than mid-calf even on Finn. It is this creek that we often find other children playing, sometimes even children who don't mind picking up crawdads to put in the bowls that my children brought for holding crawdads even though my kids won't actually touch them. I'm grateful that they occasionally see a salamander here and that Finn found a "beautiful poky-dotted leaf!" But mostly I'm grateful that my kids can be outside exploring without complaining of the oppressive heat.

Now, where will we venture today...

6 comments:

  1. Exactly! It gets so hot and the mosquitoes get SO bad...but we still try to find a place, anyplace, that gets us out a little! Your spot is beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a wonderful place to explore and play! Wish we had something like that here - I don't think we could stand the short walk to our creek right now - the heat/humidity is *that* bad. Tonight at 8pm we are forecasted to have a heat index of 100 degrees, down from 105 this afternoon. Ugh!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree, I just can't make my kids get out there when the heat and humidity are so thick you're drenched within minutes. But a little creek time is a great way to cool off!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow. I remember doing things like that when I was little. I wish that my girls could too.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Looks like a fun way to spend the day when it is so warm. Your crawdads look like what we call yabbies here in Australia. We loved catching them as kids. We actually have land yabbies on our block that we sometimes find when it is really wet. Jacinta

    ReplyDelete
  6. I definitely lack in that department, getting out each day (other than our backyard), especially in hot sticky weather. Around us, we would have to get in the car & drive to a lovely spot such as yours. Maybe I should try to transform our backyard so that it would be more imaginative and inviting.

    ReplyDelete

I love to hear what you think!