Walk on, Brother. Walk on.

Have you ever noticed how a change in scenery can alter your perspective and how you feel? Being outside, taking time to notice the world around can shift a mood or refresh a tired mama and her restless offspring. I have been in need of changes in perspective; I get stuck. Stuck thinking in circles. I get cranky; there's so much to accomplish and so little time and help. My village, you know the one it takes to raise your child(ren), well mine is still forming, it's in its infancy. We've been in this town for three years and I'm only just feeling myself take root. So we take to the woods or the beach and we walk with each other and our dog named Kitty. We walk and we talk and we enjoy being together. We return home and move on through our day with a new perspective. I would love to hear what you do to find solace or renew your outlook, leave me a comment below, if you please.

What we've been up to this week: reading, drawing, playing outside, biking, hiking, listening to This American Life and Homeschool Radio Shows, talking, thinking, dreaming, some small amount of destruction also a wee bit of construction.

It's the hiking I find the most fulfilling. Perhaps because we are not at home and the seemingly insurmountable piles of things to sort are not staring me down. It also seems these hikes bond the brothers in a way that the shared territory of home can not. And they request walks, almost daily. We don't call them hikes because that sounds too much like work. Plus, to me we stop too much and play for such long periods of time these walks just don't qualify to be labeled "hike". Whatever they are, they have been enriching, engaging, entertaining and we have loved every moment of them. Even when we fall into the water.

Check that climb out, you can just see Coleman's red shirt. Admittedly, I was nervous until all four feet landed safely.

The boys named these berries "Chucklebutt Berries" because they looked like butts and they made them chuckle

Flag at the playground at Tara Redwood School

A portion of the playground at Tara Redwood School

Self portrait with toes

Lovely grass

Ammo, ready to fire!

Banana Slug

Straw House in a burned out tree

Friends