The Ginger Crew + Mommy Too: Family Fun Surprises

It's been a bit of a long week. Darling Daddy is the on-call engineer for work this week. This is something that happens about once every three months and has for as long as we've been married. Not much has changed so far this week besides his working hours. Oh, and the fact that I now have two extremely energetic and on-the-go kids who like to move-it, move-it. And the weather is beautiful [thankfully] so we're out a lot.

On an on-call week Darling Daddy is gone from about 11:00-8:30 versus the usual 7:30-5:30. He also can get calls through the night. Seeing that time shift, I think all of you moms can understand why it's a long week for me. He's home to help out in the morning. The good part of the day [usually]. It's generally the easy part of the day. And he's not home in the evenings. The looong evenings. We make it through, but it truly makes me feel for all of the single parents out there and those with a spouse who regularly works late. You're amazing. It's tough doing it alone!

Today, however, we got a surprise. Since it's the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, Darling Daddy's office will be closing early. Since he was already going to be going in later as the on-call guy, his manager told him to just stay home and be prepared to take calls in the afternoon when the office [which was already pretty slow] was closing down. Hooray! It was like a magical surprise to end this week!

We decided to take off for a little hike at a new location. Rocky Woods in Medfield is where we went. It was a great little hike for the kids and we only did part of it! We will definitely be heading back in the future.

Our little trailblazer who is ALWAYS willing and insisting on being the leader.

A surprise swing set in the middle of the woods. This just about made Curly Girl's day, as she is all about the 'pump swings' this spring!

"Fishing" for some things in the pond.

Family pictures never seem to go so well with our two little active ones...

And then this...The biggest surprise of all...

Now, I'm not a snake person. At.All. They're the one thing I reallllllly don't like. Darling Daddy either. So this was interesting. This guy was about 3 feet long and BIG. This was not your typical garter snake. We see those on hikes all the time. No biggie. This was a big one. And he was right in the middle of the trail. And also right near the pond. So, Darling Daddy decided that me and the kids should stand back while he wrangled it with a stick into the water. Because, we figured it was a water snake. It also was moving a little differently than a land snake would. So, he wrangled...

And threw it into the water ...

And for a while he just stayed like this... And we thought we had killed him. We thought, "Oh no. This was not a water snake. We drowned a land snake."

We just watched. And watched. Daddy was pretty happy with his skills.

And after a lot of watching, Daddy decided to give it another poke. And it moved! And started swimming like crazy! It was, in fact, a water snake! I'll admit, I was a bit relieved. I didn't want to be those people who kill wildlife in the Department of Conservation & Recreation state park... Whew.

So, we headed back to the car after a very eventful hike.