Hikes & Bikes

July has been a month of hiking a biking. We started off in the beginning of the month with a trip to Mattheissen State Park.  We were headed for Starved Rock, a nearby State Park, but Steve wanted to stop at Mattheissen first. He'd remembered going there with his family as a teen and wanted to see if they still had the same stepping stones across the creek.

We wound of staying there the rest of the afternoon. I'm glad because I think it was more beautiful than Starved Rock. Maybe it was just the section we were in, but I loved the cliffs, the narrow gorges and creeks.

Both kids still ride with training wheels ( I think that's partly our fault for not taking them off and letting them practice more), but they can sure make their bikes fly! It's the first year that it's actually been fun to go bike riding. We can go for longer trips, and both kids do great keeping up.

We took a three mile bike loop ride around the Brookfield Zoo, stopping every once in a while to swing on branches and throw sticks in the water. We also took another longer bike ride in the woods near the Grau Mill in the Fullersburg Woods. Halfway through we stopped at the nature center for some play before riding to the creek and throwing branches in the water.

After the long, hot, sticky afternoon, we came back home to roast some hot, sticky Smores over the fire pit!

Another weekend in July we drove to my sister's house. My mom and I took Alexa and my sister's son for a bike ride around the block and then down to her pond. I'm so glad that even though it's almost the middle of August as I write this, the kids arn't about to go school in a few weeks. We don't have to think of this as the end of summer, but can look forward to at least two more months of great weather to go out and explore more wonderful nature areas near our home. I love our unschooled life!

Mojave Desert, Nevada

After two great weeks in San Diego, we drove back the five hours to Las Vegas. We decided to drive back and stay one more night rather than jump on a plane right away. I don't think the kids would have done too well with that.

Traffic was horrendous driving into Las Vegas on a late Friday afternoon. We weren't sure how much time we'd have, but we decided to take a detour through the Mojave Desert and try to hike some sand dunes. We'd heard that the place we were stopping at had the third largest dunes in the United States.

Well, we didn't start hiking until almost five and didn't want to get stuck out in the desert at night, but we were able to hike pretty close to the highest dunes you can see in the picture above. We had a great treat as soon as we got out of the car when we watched a desert tortoise make his way across the road. He even let the kids pet him - sort of.

We live in the suburbs of Chicago, so needless to say we never have it absolutely quiet at home. I think it was the first time in my life that I understood what absolute quiet really meant! 

For a desert, it was breathtakingly beautiful. We saw two other people on our hike, so it felt like the desert was ours. Steve and the kids had a blast sliding up and down the dunes. Jared did wind up twisting his knee when he decided to run full force down one of the dunes. I'm just thankful it happened right as we were headed back anyways, and it stopped hurting after a few days.

We wished we could have spent much, much more time in the desert. We love to be in nature and away from crowds of people, so this last little adventure of our trip was food for our souls.

Point Loma, San Diego

My favorite, favorite, favorite place we visited in San Diego had to be Point Loma. It was so beautiful that we came here twice during our two week stay. I wish I could go back now and sit on those cliffs listening to the ocean, searching out the tide pools and watching the kids skip across the sand .

The second time we came we toured an old lighthouse.  Although we couldn't go all the way to the top, I had never seen a lighthouse where the rooms were set up just like when the family had lived there. If you have a chance to visit San Diego (or if you live there!), don't pass up this beautiful gem.

What We Did Love in Las Vegas

Last post I wrote about what we didn't like about Las Vegas, but to be fair, there were quite a few things we did like. For one, we had a great afternoon at the pool at the hotel. I'm pretty much a baby about cold water, so I didn't go in too far, but the kids loved, loved, loved swimming with Steve. We all went into the hot tub afterwards, which I had no problem with!

I personally loved eating out all the time. Steve's work gave us a very generous stipend for food, so we went to the Rainforest Cafe at MGM grand (where we also were able to see the lions), Outback Steakhouse, ordered pizza with room service, and a few other places.

While Steve was in one of his meetings, the kids and I walked over to the Bellagio to check out the indoor botanic gardens. It was pretty small, and the kids were whiny that day and wanted to be carried most of the time, but we did have fun taking silly pictures together.

I think Jared's highlight of Las Vegas was seeing Batman walking down the street and taking a picture with him. We also thought it was pretty cool to see Spiderman walking down the street, by himself, at 9:00 on a Sunday morning.

But the greatest part of Las Vegas was going to Red Rock Canyon. We LOVE the outdoors and this was a gorgeous place to hike. It's kinda crazy how Jared will whine to be held when we walk down the sidewalk, yet he hiked for three hours straight and didn't complain once.

We found a man made pond and had a relaxing time dipping our feet in the water and just chilling out. We had wanted to spot some animals, so it was a little disappointing to only see a beetle and lizard, but the scenery was breathtaking. I highly, highly recommend visiting this great get-away from it all just twenty minutes away from the Strip.

November Hikes

I wrote recently about our October hikes and really didn't think we'd be taking many in November, but it's been a surprisingly warm first part of November, and we've been trying to take advantage of it for as long as we can.

On Sunday afternoon we decided to go by the woods near our house to feed the geese. Well, we got a pretty late start and didn't see any geese near the pond. We saw a few deer playing across a field, but when we started walking towards them, we heard the police car making its rounds and were kicked out of the woods. It was only 5:00, but already the sun had almost set. It's always a shock to me every year to get used to this.

But today we more than made up for our failed woods hike. Steve came home early from a meeting downtown, so we drove down to the Fullersburg Woods next to the Old Graue Mill.

We brought bread with us and found one duck to feed.

The kids we running, and climbing, and surprisingly Jared didn't want to be carried that much by Steve.

I don't have any pictures of it (they turned out way too dark), but we ran into a family of deer. I have never seen deer run so close to me before. It really was a thrilling feeling. We saw the most beautiful buck with these huge antlers. We crept as silently as we could to the edge of the pond where the deer dipped their heads into the water on the other side of us, and then bent their heads up to stare at us, too.

We went into the nature center, but they were closing up just as we walked in. We talked about how we must come back in the snow, all bundled up, to walk in the woods once again, and not tell ourselves to wait until next spring.

2nd Annual Halloween Walk

We had our second annual Halloween Walk last week. I just looked at my blog post from last year and couldn't believe how small the kids look! It makes me sad to think I'll be saying how little they looked this year next year.

We took the same route as last year, so we saw a lot of the same things. It was fun to remember the previous year and to visit some favorite houses.

I guess we've come up with a new family tradition. Gosh, to think we might take a Halloween Walk together when they're 18! We'll probably do one other walk with Steve tomorrow in a different part of the village.

There were quite a few house decorated that were slightly disturbing such as this one....

...but then you wouldn't catch me anywhere near a horror movie or haunted house today. For some reason this stuff doesn't scare either of my kids. What unique Halloween traditions does your family have?

Fullersbury Woods

One of our favorite places to hike is near the Old Graue Mill in Oak Brook. We've taken the short hike from the Mill to the Fullursburg Education Center before, but we've never walked the trails further to the west of the center.

I've recently joined a mother's group, mainly for the activities for children and a chance for the twins to play with other kids. We had a wonderful time at someone's house where a mother read a story, and then the kids did a very short art activity afterwards. Mainly, they liked going to a different house with new toys to play with.

This day, in the middle of November, we met up with four other families for a short hike. Since we were one of the first families to arrive, the kids checked out the nature center for a while.

We had been here one other time, so the kids ran to their favorite areas first. I don't have any pictures of it, but there is a giant treehouse the kids climbed into that was filled with stuffed animals.

Alexa was drawn to the books, of course.

Jared wanted to make animal tracks in the silly-puddy type material.

They also checked out the different fur pellets of various local animals as well as a few animal skulls.

They day was wonderfully sunny. Alexa started to warm up to the other kids, particularly to a boy who was their same age. Jared, however, wanted me to carry him a lot of the time. That is one reason why I still do not take long walks with them. He gets very insecure in new situations and wants to be carried for a while until he feels more comfortable. Even though he is just barely over 30 pounds, it still is hard to carry him for a long time due to my partially prolapsed bladder.

It's kind of strange, but once I offered Jared a cracker, he held onto it like a security blanket (something he had done quite a bit when he was younger), and then he was fine and walked by himself. I think it also helped that we stopped by a pond, and he loves to throw rocks in water.

We haven't been back since that day, but it's a goal of mine to visit again very soon. Actually, I'd love for us to get outside much more this year, every day if we can. I was proud this year that we did some type of park, hike or outside play at least four or five days a week. I notice a huge difference in the kids when they get outside in the fresh air to play.