“Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.”

 

I love that every time we go for a walk Opeie picks up an object to take with him to photograph  Sometimes it's a toy and sometimes it's something he has created, whatever it is though he wants it photographed in a tree, in grass, next to a mushroom or on moss which to me always says a lot about how he feels about nature and being outdoors. Today was Yoda's turn for the star treatment.

"The toad, without which no garden would be complete"

Day 94:

When I popped out in the garden last night I saw this little cutie quickly disappear under the shed. Tonight when I walked outside they were obviously feeling a little braver and came over to say hi. Our garden is only really small but backs on to an undisturbed piece of land with a stream so we get all sorts in there. The frogs always freak when I pick them up but this little dude happily sat on my hand for a photo shoot, my toady encounter really made my evening. 

"Well, I, happened to... Find me a buggy Coming out from under a rock in the grass, yeah..."

Day 60:

Im not really sure why but I seem to attract shield bugs, they seem to find me and then just hang around. Todays little chap landed on me while I was painting on the trampoline. He did his thing and I took some pictures and then put him down on the ground and moved to paint over on the garden sofa. The cutie followed me and landed on my watercolour palette before finding its way back onto my hand. I like to think that it knew all about our love of beetles and just wanted to join the club and get a bit of attention. Nature is amazing!

"The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life."

A month or so back me and my little sidekick took Mrs M to a business meeting in Stroud, I'd never been before and had no idea what was there so the prospect of heading in to unchartered territory as always was exciting. We love just wandering around places we don't know and taking everything in. When we arrived Mrs M went off to do what she needed to do and we went adventuring. I thought it would be fun to get Opeie to point out all the things he could see that interested him and I'd take pictures. I'm not sure why but the post never got written but a few days back we had to go to Stroud again so we played the same game and well, here's some of the pictures from both trips.

It was nice to see that a lot of the things that interested Opeie were from nature, trees, berries etc...

We stumbled in to a little toy shop and found a little fox to come home with us. The Gruffalo and little brown mouse were very happy about the new addition to our family and 'foxey' as we're calling him now has become a 'book fox' and reads with us every afternoon...

Opeie seemed quite amused by the 'lady with an iPad head' in one of the bank windows, So she was added to Opeie's items of interest. It was so much fun listening to Opeie get excited about things and then say 'Daddy take a picture!'.

"Wow daddy look! a big number 1!" i love how excited he gets about everything...

Fox!!!!

Opeie was really missing mommy and we thought it was cute when we found this book in a charity shop to read while we were having snacks...

More Foxes!!!

Opeie was really excited when we found a book with his friends name on the front.

yeah, you guessed it... Fox!!!

And there you have it, the things that grab a 3 year olds attention. It would be lovely to have his innocence for the day and only see the beautiful things that are in our eye line. As a dad (although i did pick up on the many things Opeie did), i was concentrating more on a cyclist that almost hit us, Selfish smokers blowing smoke our way and an array of people effing and jeffing as they walked by with no consideration that there were young ears present. Never lose that innocence Opeie in many ways i crave it daily for myself.

"After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb."

If someone had have told me four years ago that in four years time you will be signing up to be a member of the national trust I'd have laughed in their face. I was a party boy through and through and I would never have been found traipsing around a stately home or castle ruins. Just goes to show how much my life has changed and as we sat in a valley coffee shop filling out our application i had a little chuckle to myself.

These days I've traded in the alcohol, late night partying and waking up and not knowing where I am for quality time with the three people I love the most. We asked Seth what he wanted to do yesterday and he told us he wanted to splash around in a stream with his wellies on so I packed the car and we headed on our way. Thankfully the weather was great, warm and with a sun that was shining bright. As soon as we had reached our destination, used the facilities and filled out our application it was wellie time and as soon as Opeie had got his famous and very glamorous pink sparkly Peppa Pig wellies on we were being pulled over to the nearest hole with water in it.

I'm not a huge fan of stomping through streams and turning over rocks but if it makes the boys smile then I'm happy to pop my wellies on and get wet. The stream was pretty shallow compared to our last visit, so Seth's plans at catching fish with his bare hands was soon shattered. Opeie soon got bored of looking down at clear water with nothing going on and dragged me to the foot of the valley where there was a rope climb and informed me he wanted to go up. Excellent i thought, my boy is going to be a climber, that's exactly how I was when I was young, always climbing trees and tall hills. It worked out quite well as while me and Opeie went climbing Mrs M and Seth continued their nature hunt.

It was a steep walk but surprisingly apart from steadying himself on my shorts for balance a couple of times he managed the hike by himself. A huge change from the boy a year ago who could only roll to get about. He was more interested in saying "Be careful daddy" every ten steps (i guess he knows first hand how accident prone i am). When we reached the top Opeie let out a loud 'yeah we did it daddy', looking very proud of himself.

Opeie spotted Seth and Mrs M from way up high and gave them a shout which echoed through the valley. They looked up and waved so we took a photo, not a great one but that's them smack bang in the middle of the picture.

After Seth had finished splashing around and me and Opeie had made our way down we went for a gentle stroll as Seth's legs were starting to hurt. Me and Mrs M being the grown ups that we are took it in turns to sprint up the steep hills while being timed to see who won (I'll let you decide for yourselves who you think was fastest). 

It was so nice being out in the middle of nowhere for the afternoon and spending quality time together. Although Seth Struggles to walk to far,pottering about was lots of fun. The only sad part of the day was the amount of dead bees that we saw. We're always reviving bee's at home with honey and our trip out as made us realise that we need a utility belt with a honey dispenser on it. We did spot one interesting bug though that was happily strolling about.

Well i guess being part of the National Trust now we better take advantage of all the beautiful places in the UK. We will definitely making the most of it over the next year and have already spotted some interesting looking places so stay tuned of the coming weeks.