Sunny Spring Days

Last week, some of us got our first sunburns of the year! Joseph got his going out for ten minutes with his school class without a hat. The rest of us were outside picking up trash. How exciting is that? Every time it's windy for more than a day (which is often) we find the grass around our house (and everywhere else) littered with trash.
There is always some degree of garbage from litter-bug school kids : pop cans and bottles, pens, papers, etc. But after a windy spell, we can also find bits of random plastic, roof tiles, insulation, and other random garbage. My guess is that some of it comes from the open garbage bins, while the rest blows out of people yards and houses.


The first time I witnessed this phenomenon, I thought maybe the full time maintenance people might pick it all up eventually. But I learned that nope, everyone just waits for it to blow on across the prairie.
We soon adopted the habit of picking up any trash we find on the way to the mailboxes, and on these especially messy days, we take bags out and go around gathering up everything we can find. For some reason, Elora and Josh actually ask to go pick up garbage, and find it rather enjoyable. Maybe because it's such a fun family activity?

The next day it was actually sunny again, so we decided to go on a little walk about.



This is a little rodeo-type area nearby that hasn't been used for years, by the look of it.

Elora and Josh have come here with me before, but I was a little nervous with Jonah climbing around! When we were going back down the stairs, he went to go backwards like babies do...but he almost backed up over the edge instead of toward the stairs! I was glad I was right there and able to stop him.


Then Elora decided to bring more adventure to our day by falling on a big ream of barbed wire just laying on the ground. She totally freaked out (and hypochondriac daddy freaked out later about her needing a new tetanus shot) but she just got this big scratch on her leg, and a few smaller ones on her arm. Mommy wasn't too worried...I'm all about up-to-date immunization.



We spent the rest of our adventure exploring familiar areas around the perimeter of our little community...you know, like our favorite piles of dirt.




And I was glad we had, because that night the rest of the clouds rolled in, and we were inundated with rain all weekend!



Yay for Spring!