Just Around the Corner

Yesterday my six year old son finished his last Frog and Toad story.  It was a very timely chapter: Corner from Frog and Toad All Year (sorry we don't read in order).  It was in short about Spring being just around the corner.  Wouldn't you know it: the last few days we've been prepping our garden area for planting so yesterday we put in some of our seeds.  Just as we were finishing my husband called and said he would be home shortly.  Did we want to go on a hike? Perfect! Let's go find some more spring around the corner.

I won't bore you with the ugly details of trying to get six kids ready for an out of the blue hike.  Oh, the chaos!  But, instead lets focus on the actual hike and all that we got to take in.  Our destination was the back side of our usual Wild Woods spot in the Santa Rosa Valley.  Here we go on a criss-cross steep incline trek:

My three year old and I carried the rear and yes I felt just like him:

Along the way up we couldn't help but admire what was above us:

This hawk kept circling for a while.

 

To the east an almost full moon in the sky:

And once we got to the top we could start looking down (a little endurance credit: I carried the baby down ... o.k. because my husband had to carry our three year old):

Don't know if you can see it, but there is a little creek down there ; )

It's interesting how the kids started noticing some color on the ground:

Usually an hour before the time we were heading back it has already turned dark outside.  To the west of us, as we descended, the sun going down:

Yes, just around the corner, I'd say!