Playing in the Forest on a Friday Afternoon

This week we had our first very hard freeze.  It’s much earlier than normal for us here next to the Big Lake, but it happened nonetheless, and while it has been met with a bit of wistfulness and shock (it was so very warm just a few days ago)  it has the tremendous advantage of killing almost all the mosquitos.  During the late summer we were plagued with mosquitos I haven’t seen the likes of in years.  The kidlets were not fans.  In fact, it took great effort to drag them outside any time of day after a few bad mosquito experiences, even though the numbers of mosquitos were on the decline, I believe.

Yesterday we went to play in the mosquito free forest.  The kidlets, orchestrated by YaYa (she has such great ideas even though she doesn’t always execute them gracefully) dressed up.  Mr. SP was a pirate king/sword carrying hero, YaYa was a knight, and The Banana was dressed in head to toe pink, her fancy dress complete with pink wings.  She carried her new walkie talkies in her pink wicker purse, wore dangling earrings, and two unmatching pink socks inside her tennis shoes.  I strapped Mr. Trouble on Feet on my back to get him to the part of the forest the kidlets wanted to play in, and then let him loose to tromp around and pick up sticks.

Mr. Trouble on Feet really loves a nice, long stick.  He loves wacking things like trees and other sticks.  And his Mama.  I got a good clunk to the head several times when I wasn’t watching closely.

There were lots of searches for dragons and other forest dwelling creatures.  There was excessive chattering on those wonderful walkie talkies.  There was flittering back and forth between two lovely forts made of sticks in this part of the forest.  It was a great way to spend a nice Friday afternoon outside, and we were blessed with good temperments until the end when a small squabble about the walkie talkies ensued.