“When I was growing up, kids would go outside and play all day and invent things. And my brothers and I pretended our picnic table was a ship one summer. Our bikes were horses, and our trees were forts. We turned everything in the world into make-believe.”
Mary Pope Osborne, Writer of The Magic Tree House books
As I write this, it is raining outside. I can hear the rain drops pounding on the roof of the three-seasons room in my parents’ house. I can hear the wind blowing through the large trees in the forest behind the house, and in front of the house cars are speeding through puddles on the road. After living in a dry desert for a long time, these rainy days are really quite special. Seeing the ground saturated with water, feeling the warmth of summer cooled, experiencing the quiet of a quintessential rainy day. It’s a settling experience for which I am grateful.
I am also quite grateful for a summer where I can sit outside with the kids and enjoy the sunshine instead of hiding from it. We have really been taking advantage of the opportunity for nature walks and picnics since moving back home in May. And I’m realizing how important it is to keep our van supplied with a picnic blanket that can be taken anywhere. My next goal is to find some regional guide books to have stashed in the car for these trips so that we can identify more on our nature walks.
In the meantime, I’m working on some special nature walk picnic blankets to sell in the Etsy shop so keep posted! As you can see above, our kids are pretending that our homemade picnic blanket is even more than a mat to enjoy some nourishment on… it’s a backyard fortress to fight mythical and imaginative creatures from.
Hoping you’re enjoying the sun, the clouds, or the rain wherever you are today!
