Into the woods (raising little outdoorsmen)

One thing I've been looking forward to about living in Sachem is the easy access to the outdoors and nature.  I'll confess, on my own I'm not a huge outdoorsy person.   But, over the past 15 years (has it been that long?!) of being Zach's significant other I've spent my share of time outdoors with him, from car camping to several full-on backpacking trips, and I do appreciate a beautiful location and how amazing nature can be.  I also have noticed and love how spending time out in nature makes Zach come alive, and see that trait in my kids as well, which makes me want to give them as much of that exposure as possible.

California provided pretty easy access to nature, but here it's literally at our back door (well, would be if we had one). We have a large field on one side, and trail-dotted woods surrounding 3/4 of our neighborhood.  The other day Zach and I took the boys on a short walk through the woods to explore. We walked to the trailhead and went past about 50 yards of tall grass which immediately made me think TICKS TICKS TICKS (we did wear long pants, and yes we looked incredibly dorky with our pantlegs tucked inside our socks).

Then we entered the woods, and holy crap people. It was... magical.  These are pictures taken just with my phone so they're not the best. We'll have to go back soon and take the dslr next time.

We had Quinn in the backpack at first but pretty soon he was demanding to walk as well.  We didn't go far, but they definitely had fun stumbling over rocks, driving cars through the trail, and finding big sticks.  I'm pretty excited to see how everything changes with the seasons, too.  That should be pretty amazing.  (Oh, and while we each got a couple new mosquito bites, we didn't find any ticks. Yay)