The Adventures of Mom and Nature Girl

You all know how much I love, love being outdoors, and particularly my love of hiking. Hiking is the perfect combination of leisure and sport, getting to spend time in beautiful nature while getting a good workout. Nothing could be finer! My kids have, obviously, been hiking with me for quite some time, and now that my oldest is a teenager, he doesn't go out and do things (including hiking) with us very much anymore. My husband, until recently, worked weekends, but now has Saturdays off. That still leaves Sundays for my youngest and me to get out there and enjoy nature.

We love it. It's perfect for mommy-daughter special time, we get some fresh air & exercise, and we collect things we find on the trails. To that end my daughter said to me recently on one of our hikes, "Mommy, we should make a nature scrapbook!" I thought about it for all of two seconds and responded, "That's a fantastic idea!" It was a fantastic idea, and, as soon as we got done hiking, we stopped by the dollar store to grab some scrapbook-making supplies.

We made the scrapbook using a sketch pad, some poster board, and plenty of decorative supplies. It took a few days of patiently waiting for the glue to dry, but we are happy with the results. (See the first two pictures.)

This last weekend, we took a leisurely walk through the forest around Cunningham Lake, and the nature pictures following are from that walk. The items we collected from that day didn't survive the trip home, but it's okay...there is plenty of opportunity in the future!

Here's the scrapbook itself. It's a large sketch pad covered in green poster board and decorated. It says, "Eva and Mommy's Nature Scrapbook".

Here is the first page of our scrapbook, containing flora and fauna that we collected from the day we decided to make our scrapbook. I made a post about that hike, in Hummel Park, recently, which you can find here.

This is a picture from our Cunningham Lake walk. It was a gorgeous, albeit easy, walk.

Wildflowers are one of the frequent things we see on our nature walks/hikes.

Fungi growing right along the trail. Horses ride here too, so I'm sure the dung helps fungi grow. Ha!

More wildflowers along Cunningham Lake.

Nature Girl (NG) striking a pose near some pretty overgrowth we found.

A better shot of the overgrowth. It reminded me of a swamp or a place that time forgot. Either way, it was really cool.

More wildflowers.

A dying dandelion in the sun. 

I hope you all have a fantastic Tuesday (yay, we made it through Monday), and we'll see you soon!

Much love,

H.A.