Deerfield Park

Aaron and I have a recurring biweekly date night set up for Wednesday nights with our babysitter, Kim.

The girls are crazy about Kim, and it’s been great to have a babysitting relationship (and friendship) with her for two years now. This past Wednesday, however, Kim had a project for school, so we rescheduled our date for 8:30 a.m. this morning. What we didn’t know when we scheduled it was how perfect a day it would turn out to be!

After struggling to find creative date ideas through the winter, Aaron had the great idea to go hiking this morning at Deerfield County Park. The air was crisp, and the sun was shining—which made for gorgeous weather for an early morning nature walk. We hiked to the camp sites at the park and talked about possibly taking the girls camping there this summer. It was a very relaxing, stress-free morning, and it was great to talk together and get some exercise.

As we were leaving, we had another idea: to come back later in the afternoon for a picnic. We called our good friends Josh & Becky and invited them and their boys to join us. Here is a picture of Madeline with Miles. (The one about whom she says, “I like Miles so much. He’s my favorite friend.”)

And here’s Josh with three of the kids, getting ready to watch Aaron push over a dead tree. (It’s a new hobby of Aaron’s.)

I know it looks like he already pushed the tree over, but that was just part of the tree that had fallen. He pushed over another large section of the tree, and Kayla thought her daddy was pretty cool!