Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!

Earth definitely deserves more than one day of celebrations. I'm pretty partial to this planet of ours so we made sure to do a full weekend of celebrating :)

On Saturday Declan and I joined my friend and her children, along with about 18,000 other people, to march for science in downtown Sacramento. Turns out my brother was there too somewhere. Shows you how good my family is at that whole communication thing. Whoops! 

Declan had mixed feelings about the whole marching business. The fact that it was at lunch time didn't help matters, and we wound up right next to someone with a bullhorn which he wasn't fond of, but overall he was a trooper and he even managed to march the last few blocks toward the capitol building all on his own. I'm very proud of my little activist and everyone else who showed up. 

In case you're wondering where Ez was, he and daddy had their own date and went to story time, a car show, and Sac State. Ez was on Cloud 9 and basically only wants to do things with Daddy now. Mommy who?

On Sunday we got out in nature for a family hike. This was our first hike since we've moved and we found a great spot in Auburn right along the American River. When we got there and Ez saw the mountain he said, "I wanna walk up that mountain!" Proud mama moment right there. I want Ez and Declan to love nature and hiking just as much as Joe and I do. Then I made the mistake of asking him, "you want to hike up that mountain with Mommy?" "No. With Daddy!" Proud moment over. He even felt the need to reiterate a moment later, when I thought we'd dropped the subject. "Do I want to hike with Mommy or Daddy?" Ok, ok, I get it kid. #demoted

Aside from the fact that I was total third wheel status we couldn't have picked a better day for a hike. Perfectly sunny but mild weather, wild flowers blooming, and these beautiful black butterflies fluttering around. The river was a deep turquoise blue color. Everything was just gorgeous. And the boys were in amazing moods, giggling and running along the path, collecting rocks, darting toward the cliff to look at the river and nearly giving me a heart attack. The highlight had to be when we got off the beaten path and found a secluded little stream perfect for tossing rocks into. We literally had to drag Declan away crying, otherwise he would've been content to stay for hours. Also, please note that he wasn't tossing little pebbles into the water. The kid was hefting these giant boulders over his shoulder and shot putting them into the water. Ez had to take cover a few times. Mini Hulk in the making.

It was definitely one of those weekends that I wished would've lasted a teensy bit longer. But as Ez likes to say whenever we leave anywhere, "We'll be back."

And now for a few too many photos of our weekend adventures. Hope you had a great one!