Rainy Day Adventure

We have been really fortunate with the weather this summer. Pretty much everyday has been dry and relatively comfortable, which insures plenty of time to take the kids outside and run them to the point where they are tolerable for the rest of the day. Unfortunately into every life a little rain must fall and while we live in a house large enough to let the kids burn off some energy eventually they need to go outside or I'm going to crack. After nap time we went off in search of adventures in the woods.




I had been promising the kids we would find a salamander/newt in the woods for a couple of weeks, but they are pretty tough to find when it hasn't rained for awhile.  However, after a few hours of a light rain, Eastern Newts are pretty easy to find in the woods if you look through the leaf litter around the edges of the woods.  We found this little guy pretty early on in our adventure.  All kids like lizards and they especially like orange lizards that pee on dad's hand.

The other thing that kids like are spider webs.  Right along the side of the trail is this great funnel web the kids always like to check out and with the light rain today the web was really beautiful.





We wandered through the woods for awhile longer and I've gotten really good at identifying the point to turn around so no one wants to get carried until we are right at the end of the walk and I can happily tell them to drag it along on their own.  After all, the point is to wear them out, not wear out dad.  They had the entire rest of the day to work on that task.