lila's birthday trip

**Note :: lots of pictures to follow!  It may take a minute to upload.

Oh this little birthday girl of mine... so full of joy, so ready to connect with others, so full of love.  She's a special one, I tell you.  

(The requisite birthday quilt... finished on time! whew!)

I was feeling a bit down about her birthday... For the older 2, we've been in Louisiana surrounded by friends and family.  I wasn't certain how to celebrate her day.  How to make it special.  Of course, I defaulted to our birthday trip tradition... but she's only 1... and she takes 2 naps a day.  I wasn't sure what kind of an outing she would enjoy.

It was that wonderful man I married who came through, with the simple statement of, "I kind of like it just us."  And just like that, I had a new view of the day.  When I mentioned the ferry, he knew to pack a sack of the dried bread we save for feeding turtles and ducks and now sea gulls!  When I said, "Hey that looks like a good stop," he immediately doubled back and let us wander as long as we liked.  (He's not usually a spontaneous pit stop kind of guy.)  It was literally the most perfect day of celebrating this little fireball of energy that we are blessed to have.  

These are the birds...

that followed us...

the entire trip...

across the river.

Everyone of us completely enjoyed this little expedition.

We drove off the ferry intending to turn right around and hop back on.  Instead we discovered a very long line waiting on that end.  We decided to make the hour or so drive back home.  (It takes considerably longer from that side of the river because you have to drive around the peninsula to the bridge.)  Besides we had used up all of our bread.

It was a gorgeous country-side, farmland, rolling hills sort of drive.  The kiddos were unimpressed.  That's when we spotted a sign for a state park, turned off onto a mostly one lane road, and arrived at the 'gorgeously green, flower and butterfly filled, set on the edge of the river,' Chippokes State Park.

Dada is full of 'stupid human tricks.'  These generally result... 

in 'little people tricks!'

And this climber of mine?  Oh my.  Her big sisters call her Trouble Bear (they continue to make up Care Bears) because she is always trying to climb in or up or over something that she shouldn't!  Just for the record, she did manage to hoist herself up there.