Saturday at the Forest

Today we went here. It's one of those places near our town that we've heard of and have always meant to visit, but just never have. We did not know what we were missing. And as of today, we're members! What a beautiful place. There are miles and miles of hiking trails, including some that are handicap accessible boardwalks. There's also an indoor nature center with interactive exhibits for kids and an outdoor nature play area in a forest clearing. Lucy's favorite was the treehouse:

She played musical instruments, dug for dinosaur bones, and got to pretend she was a fox and crawl around in the fox hideaway,

and scamper like a squirrel through a hollow log:

She spent the most time playing with rocks and sticks and leaves in the little creek. Our little engineer spent a LONG time reaching underneath that bridge behind her to try to figure out why leaves and sticks were getting trapped. After about 20 minutes of moving rocks and clearing out debris by poking under the bridge with a large stick, Lucy and mama finally got things to float underneath to the other side! As Lucy said, "I had a great idea!"

Lucy ran ahead of mama and daddy for the first 2/3 of our hike, then ran out of steam on the way back. Sheri never gets tired of taking this same picture of Lucy on Nathan's shoulders. She is getting pretty tired of Nathan always wearing that same hat, though.

Now Nathan is outside building a compost bin while Lucy tries valiantly to NOT fall asleep for her nap. We have a couple of parties to go to tonight and are even getting a babysitter so we can stay late at the second one. It's a GREAT day in Omaha!