On the day after Thanksgiving, we steered clear of the stores and headed to Schenck Forest. Actually, we tried to go to Prairie Ridge, but it was closed. It was a beautiful fall day, and because we were slow in the morning and didn't arrive there until nearly 11am, the first thing we did was sit down in a patch of sun in the leaves to have a snack. I can always tell when Simon needs a snack because he completely refuses to walk. Once he was properly fueled up, he hiked most of the way on his own.
Once everyone had obtained enough energy, we headed off into the woods. We don't hike much, actually. We just let the kids play with sticks, pretend to fish off bridges, and climb on fallen down trees. These mornings in the woods are so enjoyable.
We try to encourage Alice to "be bold and brave" (a phrase borrowed from Thomas) and do things that she's a little bit afraid of. Here, we encouraged her to climb all the way up a fallen tree. It wasn't that high off the ground, but she still had to conquer her fear to get to the end--and she did.
Then later, she was surprisingly unafraid to scoot across this tree that had fallen over a stream. She scooted all the way to the other side and then back again. Unfortunately, Simon also wanted to crawl across, and yelled at me to not help him. I decided that I would rather not fish him out of the river, so I convinced him to go climb on other logs that were not suspended above water.
