All In The Golden Afternoon

Today I was home with the boys all day. Well, Josiah had school this morning, but when it's only a half day for half day kindergarten...he was barely gone before it was time to fetch him again!

Actually, before getting to the golden afternoon part, let me stick a few earlier pics from the day in here. 

I cut some circle holes in a box for a beanbag toss game this morning. Both boys enjoyed it...

...although William was somewhat hampered by the fact that he liked to hog all of the beanbags. Made throwing a little tough. He wanted the entire pile in his arms even when Josiah wasn't around, just for the challenge of holding them all? Who knows.

Josiah has been doing a great job keeping up with his little chores. As you know, his one "special job" yesterday was moving over some laundry. Today's was unloading the dishwasher, which he did surprisingly well.



But moving on to the afternoon: We went off to find a little adventure. It was cold and blustery but bright. Since both boys enjoy bridges (William especially begs me to pull u-turns to go back under or over bridges when we're out and about...) I thought we'd find Neff's Mill covered bridge, not many miles from here but which we've never seen. We found it just fine and it was quaint and lovely, but the road was super narrow and the landowners all around seemed clearly uninterested in tourists stopping to actually get out—there was nowhere safe to tuck even our little car seeing as the side of the road was pegged with stakes and such. The bridge itself is one lane and all wood. We had fun driving through (three times, since we did the obligatory u-turn twice!).


Stymied from getting out there, we carried on to the park in Strasburg and had a ramble through the wetland paths instead. It was a great nature walk. The boys enjoyed seeing berries and birds, sticks and stones, and their pockets were well-filled by the end as any little boy's pockets should be on such an occasion.

Milkweed pods certainly stole the show. They were a new wonder for the kids. You can see the front pod in the photo above has been divested of its silken contents. Many little parachutes made it into pockets:

Others were carefully inspected at various stages of development:

And lots were simply scattered to the wind!

Plenty of fun. :) What these pictures don't show is how chilly we were getting or the fact that William actually wanted to be carried most of the time, but we obviously had a wonderful time anyway. Oh, and before heading home for hot chocolate with marshmallows, we took a 20 minute stop at the playground.

And there you have it! Wish you were here with us, Daddy!