Tree-filled Weekend

It was a gorgeous weekend here, and we had an unusually empty calendar -- and that combo is the recipe for a great weekend. We took the kids to see The Lorax on Saturday, and everybody enjoyed it. One complaint that we'd heard about the movie is that it shamelessly exposes kids to a liberal agenda -- so of course David and I were all for it!! (although we prefer "progressive"). :-) It did make me feel really guilty about the 9 trees that I want to cut down in our backyard.

The kids are all about the photo booths, so after the movie they piled into one in the movie theater lobby and hammed it up. Goofballs.



But back to the trees. On Sunday we hit a hiking trail near our house, and while I've completely burned out on photography (yet another hobby bites the dust due to my inability to maintain any sense of moderation -- my friend Wendy says that I'm a serial hobbyist, which I think is charitable way to look at it) I did have my trusty phone with me, so I got a few shots. The kids enjoyed all of their favorite landmarks, like this one, which they've named the Bouncing Tree of Awesomeness:



Ah, throwing rocks into a stream: one of life's most soul-nourishing activities:



Except when my kids do it -- then rocks seem to have a way of infiltrating each other's no-fly zones, and we need to quickly move on.

Jacob and Elizabeth were playing some game that required them to hold hands at times:



So that wasn't actually a genuine moment of sibling affection, but I'll take it anyway!

We found the waterfalls, and the kids took turns going out onto the rocks with David while I stood back and kept repeating "be careful . . . be careful . . ."



The end.