Both kids are back at school tomorrow and after a cool, cloudy weekend school is a good place for them. We spent the morning cleaning up the yard of winter's grip and getting the last of the raking done (not all of it, but the last that I plan on doing). Lisa was getting a much needed breather after my long weekend away and the kids and I headed up to the Oconto forest to do some hiking and potentially some geocaching. Heading into the woods with one child dressed in a blaze orange hat and the other one wearing what appears to be a fur-bearing animal hat --looks poor in hindsight but it was completely unintentional no matter what Freud says about my ID. I had a couple of geocache sites programed into the GPS although we did not get close enough to them on our abbreviated hike to let the kids in on this plan. Sophia slept on the way up and Merrick, fresh from his own nap, was very excited about going into the woods and continued to holler that he was going deer hunting. Every group of three or more trees was followed by his shouting "woods" and "go in there." This did seem to add some time to the half-hour trip. We eventually made it to the trail I intended on hiking this afternoon and the kids quickly found a turkey feather followed by deer tracks and large turkey tracks. We even found some horse tracks followed by the inevitable "parade tracks" that had Merrick shaking his head with a wrinkled nose and saying "gross, gross indeed." Merrick was on my shoulders for a very short time, actually only until I heard a very wet sneeze followed by his high voice saying "on your hat." We found a melt water pond for the kids to toss rocks into and then a large mud puddle in the trail. Sophia and I walked around the puddle--that is right there were three of us on this trip. I told Merrick twice to get a way from the puddle and Sophia grabbed his arm to pull him away. It was as if the Sirens of Greek mythology had a grip on the boy and he broke loose and ran into the puddle, stumbled fell and was drenched. The picture of them holding hands is on the return trip, Merrick is soaked and cold. I had been carrying him but that didn't stop his crying. When I put him down to walk thinking it would warm him up he and Sophia grabbed hands and he quit crying. Back at the truck I stripped him down and we all had a "truck picnic" of peanut butter sandwiches and Easter candy.
