A Week Outdoors

I'm an outdoor kind of girl. I love to be outside. Studies have shown that time in nature is beneficial to learning, attention and focus. I think its even more important to the soul. After several weeks of being trapped inside while we passed the flu from person to person, we needed time out of the house. The weather has been beautiful, sunny, in the 70s with a breeze, so we decided to spend the whole week outside. We spent our days going to parks, the beach, an outdoor event, and Tanner and I did some outdoor shopping on South Beach. It was definitely what we needed.  We took walks in the woods, explored, watched water, fed fish and turtles, found jellyfish and an assortment of different crabs, one the size of my fingernail. We played on playgrounds, played soccer, catch and tennis.

Here's how we spent our week.....

playing in the ocean

skim boarding, the surf was perfect!

playing in the sand

napping

  climbing

playing soccer

 and peek-a-boo

 chasing birds

and butterflies

 

   finding treasure

 

climbing trees

 

 swinging

 

uni-cycling

walking in the woods

  And we found an old fort, she helped build over a month ago, still intact.

We attended a Japanese cultural festival at the History Museum. Dominick loves origami so when I heard they would have origami, I imagined a Japanese origami master who could teach him something amazing and complex that he didn't already know. It turned out to be history museum volunteers, who knew one craft, and not very well. Disappointed, he started using the paper to make his own, which of course, everyone else wanted to know how to do, including the volunteers.

So, Dominick ended up teaching origami for 3 hours.

The volunteers came and went, but Dominick stayed. 

Aravis got to dress up in a kimono.

And we waited in line for at least an hour for this candy sculpture called Amezaiku.

It was amazing to watch her turn the warm, stretchy candy into beautifully crafted animals before the candy cooled.

Aravis picked a hamster and decided it was well worth the wait.

 By far, the most magical part of our week was this.

This picture is awful and doesn't even come close to capturing it, but I included it anyway. We were walking through the woods and came across a little hidden tree, covered in Zebra Longwing butterflies. Some were fluttering around and others were sitting on the tree. We stood quiet and still and watched as they flew all around us. There was something very special and sacred about the whole thing. They were not fluttering around our backyard, we were passing through theirs. It was truly amazing and something I'll never forget.