Mission Accomplished

One of my goals every summer is to give the kids lots of opportunities to be outside and explore nature.  We took them to pick strawberries at a field nearby and had a lot of fun.  They are always wanting to pick things in our yard and I think this helped satisfy a lot of those urges.  Nevermind that only 1 out of 3 children really likes to eat strawberries, but another goal of mine is always to get the other 2 to eat more fruit, and freshly picked strawberries on top of pancakes (okay with whipped cream too) worked this night.

 Here is our area in the back that they love to pick things off, which I don't really care about, except when I noticed that yeah, we definitely have some poison ivy in there.

And this afternoon Shane brought something to Josh in the yard and asked, "What's this?"  Oh, just a dead vole.  Yeah, I think we can safely say that the kids are getting their share of "nature exploration."  And vigorous hand washing.