Walking in the Woods!

Jer's trip got cancelled right before he was scheduled to airline over to London. There was a mechanical on the airplane when it landed in Zurich, so Jer's portion of the trip had to be taken over by another operator. The good news is that we now have an impromptu four day vacation with Daddy! We decided to celebrate the time together by spending the afternoon exploring a new place; the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. The preserve is only about 30 minutes from the house and is MASSIVE. We shared lunch beforehand and then headed over for our walk. Colin did great and seemed to be most impressed with the large selection of rocks on the trail, as well as the centipede that we managed to cross paths with. They have a little visitors center that was full of turtles, snakes and even a precious little prairie dog! We also managed to to catch feeding time for their two owls, who were each handed a giant mouse to eat...it was really cool!! It was a good first hike for Colin and I think he is going to be a great outdoorsman just like his Daddy. I am always thankful for the random warm winter weeks that we experience here in Texas. Just when you think that winter is swallowing you up, the sun comes out and things heat up for a few days.


The time has come to truly say goodbye to a daily scheduled nap. I knew that Colin would grow out of it, but I am still shocked by how fast the time seemed to come. The progression is all but complete at this point. For the past week, he has not napped at all and gone to bed at 7:00pm. This is both good and bad at the same time. The great part is obviously a full evening alone with my husband. We get to talk, watch grown-up television and relax. It can't be understated how fabulous this is. The bad part is that by going to bed so early, we can't really do much in the way of evening activities. The hours of 5 to 7pm are spent carefully making sure that Colin stays awake long enough to go to sleep for the night rather than a very late nap. This is not a big deal right now...with short winter days, we are not trying to do much in the way of evening activities anyway. He sleeps for over 12 hours...still waking up at his classic 7:15am. That is wonderful. He even tells me that he is ready for bed (Mommy, I got the sleepies!). I can tell that he is happy with this new schedule because he won't even fall asleep in the car anymore. I thought for sure that he would doze off in the car after our hike today...usually his prime car nap time after a lot of activity to wear him out. He did not even LOOK tired once and made it all the way home with not even a drooping eyelid. That tells me that he is truly ready to stay awake during the day and just go down earlier for a long night. I know that there will probably be exceptions to this rule and that he will nap on occasion, but I think we are done for the most part. There is always something new going on around here, that is for sure!!

Here are some pictures from our afternoon:

This is the trail that we hiked today...it was BEAUTIFUL!


Our little family during the hike...I love Colin in this shot! (I don't love ME in this picture, but I have some pretty handsome men, eh?)

Colin was not exactly thrilled to stop and take a picture with Mommy.

The champion hiker! He loved it!!

One of my all-time favorite shots of my boys!!!!