It's Been an Outdoorsy kind of week

We are finally experiencing some signs of spring this week and I am SO happy! I determined a couple things going in to this week. One was that I wanted to get out and DO more. I wanted to go on some fun field trips and I wanted to enjoy the outdoors as much as we could. Two, if we wanted to do those things we were really going to need to organize our time wisely so that we could still get our school work done and not feel guilty when taking time off.

I made sure that I carefully planned our school stuff so that it would all work and it did! Yay! Good things happen when I use my time wisely! {Which if you remember, 'time' was one of my words this year and using it wisely was one of my goals!}

On Monday we took the girls to Mystic Village where they have a big duck pond. The girls always love going there to feed the ducks.

Then we went on a hike to a place nearby that we'd never been before. We looked up letterboxing online and found a letterbox on this hike. It's always so fun and rewarding when you FIND the letterbox! woohoo!

It was one of the rockiest places I've ever seen! There were thousands of huge boulders. We did lose the trail for a short time and I *might have* had a slight panic attack and *maybe* even visions of seeing ourselves on that show 'I shouldn't be alive' but thankfully my wonderful hubby helped us find our way back to the trail - whew! I was never so happy to see that blue marker painted on the trees!

We came upon this awesome rock formation - it really looked like it would just tip over but amazingly it didn't.

One thing I'm trying very hard to work on is being a 'yes' Mom. Some of you know what I'm talking about. So often I say NO simply because I don't want to deal with mess or don't want to take time to do things with the girls. I'll be honest, I'm selfish much of the time and it's not something I'm proud of. I'm trying really hard to put my girls and Bob ahead of my selfish desires and in doing that I'm able and even HAPPY to say 'yes' more and more to the girls.

One thing they always ask to do is go back in the woods behind our house and go to the stream. Some times I say no because I can't see the stream from the house and if I'm busy doing something in the house I can't go with them. But often I just don't *feel* like going out with them. {selfish, remember?} This week I decided to say yes. I got a pair of rain boots at Target on clearance this week and decided not only would I say yes, but that I would JOIN the girls for a fun adventure!

And guess what? It was really fun!!

Later in the week we went on another letterbox hunt, for another walk in the woods with Daddy and the puppy, to a park with friends and played basketball in the driveway as a family on Friday night after dinner. {And two fun field trips that I will blog about later}. I can't say enough how wonderful it felt to get outside and moving again. And being with my family, building these precious memories is priceless. When my girls are grown I don't want them to remember Mom as someone who sat in the house on the computer - I want them to remember me as a Mom who got my wellies on and tromped in the stream with them or who got out in the driveway to play HORSE instead of sitting inside doing housework.

It's been a great week. I pray that I will take what I learned this week and carry it into the next one and the next one and the next one .... =)