Hi Megan,
I know it's short notice, but any chance you guys would like to join us for a hike at Umstead on Sunday morning? And by "hike" I mean a slow, destinationless meander through the woods, perhaps stopping to pull bark off a dead tree or poke sticks in a creek for 20 minutes at a time, fueled by a long snack break after probably a mere 10 minutes of walking. And by "morning" I mean somewhere between 10 and 10:30ish.
She responded with "Yes Yes Yes!" and we then arranged to meet at the Harrison Ave entrance.
I only included the e-mail above because that is exactly what happened. We went down the trail just a bit, and Rye was being a little whiny, so we stopped to have a snack. Even although I had stuffed both of our kids full of food before leaving, they still managed to eat more snack.
One of the fun things in being around Alice when she's around other people is to see how they interact. Generally what I notice is that we have a lot of inside jokes and references that outsiders can't possibly get, but Alice doesn't know that, and must just sound weird. For example, Alice did something that prompted Megan to say, "Oh, you're so smart, Alice!" and Alice replied, "Yeah, I don't want to be like those foolish Molboes!" This was a reference to a book that I had as a child, that I bought online to read with Alice. She liked the stories, apparently. A few moments later, when she dropped a goldfish on the ground and picked it up, she said, "It's ok, it has more flavor that way!" This is something we say, with mild sarcasm, all the time.
The area we had pulled of the trail had some fallen down trees and a little creek, so it gave the kids lots to play on. Unfortunately, Rye was having some bowel problems and the portapotties weren't helping, so they left after about an hour (and I had failed to take any pictures yet!). But Simon and Alice continued to have fun "fishing" in the river.
After a while, we wandered off the trail and into the woods. The trail was pretty crowded anyway, since nobody passes up a warm February Sunday. We wandered in the peace and quiet, and eventually found another log to have another snack on, then Zac and the kids built a "squirrel fort."
