Carpe Diem

I haven't made any progress on the storage room since my last post; I am sorry...

But we did have a fabulous fall day yesterday. It is quite nice when God condescends to give a hint of insight to the weathermen who actually get it right, thus allowing me to make plans accordingly. I noticed that we had one good day coming. One. On this day it was supposed to be perfect: sunny, cool but not a bit cold, a calm breeze, and gorgeous colors still hanging on to most of the trees. The days before were gray and windy; the days after looked cold and windy.

We did it... The whole Carpe Diem thing. We took that day, and we lived fully within it. We doubled up on school on Monday so we could spend all day yesterday in Hutchinson. We spent the morning at a fun free zoo, ate lunch at a big park, and spent the afternoon at the Dillon Nature Center. It couldn't have been more beautiful. My thinking led me to believe that this could be one of the last full days that we could comfortably enjoy being completely outdoors 'til spring.

Highlights of our day included:

• visiting the llama (in the petting zoo) that spit right in Abby's hair over a year ago


• watching the otter dance for us while he tried to dry and fluff his soggy tail


• getting to know an attention hungry goat that reminded us a bit of Rosie


• Grace crouching down in front of an aquarium that held a turtle who pressed his little face up against the glass as if he wanted to tell us something. Without missing a beat, Grace said, "What, turtle?" and pressed her ear right up next to the glass. "O, thank you." "Mommy, the turtle said he loves me." I think he probably did.


• seeing the most majestic looking bald eagles I've ever seen up close
  
• picking out little treasures from the gift shop (which, of course nullifies this actually being the totally "free" trip I proudly told Greg we would be taking. O yeah, and gas too)


• feeling as if we had stumbled upon a magical fairy-land at the nature center. We followed a "hidden stream" surrounded by a carpet of golden leaves with perfect fairy dwellings in niches everywhere we looked.

After our day, we capped off the evening by watching Chariots of Fire with Greg. We've been reading about Eric Liddell in one of our readers for school; I love that movie. The girls enjoyed it too, believe it or not. They followed it pretty well (except for Grace; she was in bed).

As for pictures of hip hair in response to my comments, I'm feeling a little insecure about that, seeing as how I think ALL of you have hipper hair than me. This one is hard to see, but once I get my batteries recharged in my camera after yesterday, we'll see.