wild and free saturday

This morning, Poe, Hudson and AJ put on their rain boots, fleeces and hats, packed some snacks in a backpack and headed out to the woods to play.  They spent hours out there, imagining and playing and being kids.  They cleared a spot in the woods and built a (non-functional) campfire in the middle of it (carefully clearing around it so the leaves could't catch on fire).  They scouted out places to build a fort.  They came inside and I packed them lunches in their lunch boxes and sent them back out, after showing them some stick fort ideas from Pinterest.  Way to marry technology into this, right?  HAHA! 

This afternoon, the neighbor boys came out and they made their "base fort" in the pine trees out front and spent the afternoon and early evening playing nerf wars around the yard.   

This evening, the rest of the neighbor kids came over and they continued their nerf wars, rode the quad (and pushed it up our road when it ran out of gas... so cute seeing them all work together), and made plans to play kick the can after dark.

Days like this make me so thankful for our trust in this journey.   While we're settling in and feeling like this is more and more like home, days like this make me realize that this is what it's all about.  I wanted my kids to have room to run, land to play on, nature to stretch their imaginations.  They rarely ask to play electronics.  The whining and complaining indoors doesn't happen near as often.  They can spend endless hours outside running and playing and imagining.  This is the childhood I wanted for them.  This is the childhood I dreamt of for them.  Wild and free.