Hiking

Dillon & I went hiking with our friends Ginger & Ben on Wednesday. We've been hiking with them several times before and always have a great time. I had gotten a map of all of the local trails and had found a new one I wanted to try. Ginger was up for it, so off we went. It was supposed to be a trail leading down to the banks of the Connecticut River. Unfortunately, the trail was not well maintained, so it was overgrown and bug infested. It was also more or less underneath the I-89 overpass to the Connecticut River so it was also noisy. We kept thinking that it would get pretty just around the next bend, but finally ended up just adandoning that hike and heading over to another trail we had done before and knew was nice. Dillon enjoyed riding in the backpack, but started to get bored by the end of it. She kept saying "go!" then "UP!" when go didn't do the trick. All in all, though, the hike was nice with beautiful views of a mountain pond. This nice lady at offered to take our picture as we were leaving, hence the "I'm really sweaty, but this was a great hike!" picture below.

I have such a good time watching Dave and Dillon together. He hasn't been getting home until around 7pm for most of this last week, but got home early at around 4:00 yesterday. Dillon was so excited to see Da and tell him about the BIG trucks that she got to watch that day, as our neighbors were having their entire driveway paved. He got down on the floor to play with her and just made me smile to hear the various words she would say interspersed with huge peals of laughter. She has figured out that for as much fun as it is to read books with Da, he makes a pretty awesome jungle gym as well.

Speaking of jungle gyms, we met another friend and her little boy at a local park yesterday afternoon. It was empty except for us, so we pretty much had the run of the place. There is some jungle gym equipment with a couple of smaller slides and one of those bigger spiral slides. I have taken Dillon down the bigger one on my lap several times. Yesterday she headed down it before she sat on my lap. I asked her if she wanted to go by herself, which was met with her typical enthusiastic "Yeah!" I told her to go ahead, so she did. She doesn't quite get the idea that you have to lift your feet, so it was a pretty slow descent, followed closely by me. Arrival at the bottom was met with an immediate "More, More!!" My friend thought it was great that she was so daring, as her son would have nothing to do with the slide. Umm, sure. Remind me of that when we are in the ER having a post daredevil stunt gash stitched up! No, really, she's pretty cautious in trying new things and mostly does so only after I've encouraged her or shown her how to do something.

Now if we can just keep it that way when she's 16 and learning to drive!