Outside

Florida is kind of miserable outside for a good portion of the year so Winter is definitely my favorite time to be outside here.  It's hard to stay focused on school because it's finally nice enough for walks, bike rides, jumping on the trampoline, parks, picnics, etc.  Some mornings are chilly but it's still very pleasant outside.  It is supposed to cool down more this coming week (60's) but I'm loving the mild weather right now.  The neighbor boys have been coming over a lot to play with Piper and they get into all kinds of things.  I forgot what it's like to have little boys doing little boy things.  Last week they damaged some palm trees in the backyard by pretending to have a pet tiger who scratched all the trees (they took rocks to the trunk and gouged them).  They smash rocks to see the "crystals" inside, leave huge chunks of chalk on the driveway for me to drive over and smoosh, etc.  It's cute and I like that Piper can play well with little boys and she and Felicity usually come in the house filthy from digging holes in the ground (today they were digging for tiny snail shells).  Sometimes it's annoying like when they damaged the trees but for the most part it's cute.  Of the boys in our family, Eli plays outside the most.  He is still swimming in the cold pool, doing the "polar plunge," riding the scooters, and setting up battles for his army guys.  This past week when we reached our half-way point for the deployment, we put our school work aside and went on a walk on the linear trail.  There was one point where I made everyone stop and stood there like a weird-o just closing my eyes and letting the wind blow on my face and tried to take a mental picture of that moment.  For me, being out in nature, truly makes me happy.  It makes me breathe deeply and calm myself.