Exercise & Nature

Mallard Lake @ Dusk

Friday evening after a healthy dinner of grilled chicken, potatoes, and veggies, we took the kids to Mallard Lake forest preserve to get some exercise. To make it fun, I gave them each one of our old Nikon digital cameras so they could take photos along the way, which they enjoyed. The only one who didn’t entirely enjoy the walk was Joe since the mosquitoes love to dine on him.

Saturday morning we bought the boy a tennis racket and played Pictionary Jr. and Disney Scene It while waiting for the rain to pass. We managed to fit 45 minutes of tennis between rain showers but ultimately had to head home when the lightning siren went off. The rain finally went away in the evening so we took a walk around the neighborhood after dinner.

After dropping off the kids this morning, Joe and I headed to Willowbrook Wildlife Center to check out the new sandhill crane exhibit. You can’t get good photos of them, or any of the wildlife they have on site, as a matter of fact, due to the way the cages are designed. We mostly got flower photos instead. They do have a butterfly garden but it was more like a bee garden today. Not that I mind – I love the bees. Oh, and we saw a baby raccoon as well.

Bee

We stopped at Trader Joe’s on the way home because I wanted one of their pizzas. $47 later we have pecans, almonds, dark chocolate covered raisins, tapenade, orange chicken, garlic chicken, chicken fried rice, bananas, sea salt, and some other stuff I can’t remember right now. We usually don’t buy that much stuff there but it all looked so tasty, probably because we hadn’t eaten breakfast!

After dropping the cameras and food off at home, we went to the mall where I finally found a bathing suit. It’s a lot more colorful than I usually go for, but it will do. Joe bought more stuff than I did which was a bit annoying. I couldn’t find any clothes I liked at New York & Company or Kohl’s, except for the bathing suit. I did get a cute Nike tote bag, though. I’m all about the bags, much to Joe’s chagrin.

I even got a new bag for my work laptop at Target. I hate the Dell one that comes with it, as do all of my colleagues who have laptops. It has sections to hold other stuff as well so I’m not dragging around several bags and feeling like a pack mule.

After dinner we’re going to go play tennis again. I forgot how fun it was until recently. We used to play regularly when we lived in the apartment but stopped for some reason after we moved.