TGIF!

Jerry surprised Wilder and I with a day off today. We meant to go out of town. We wanted to go camping and see how the boy would handle sleeping under the stars, breathing fresh air, etc. Alas, it was not to be. In this state you have to have a permit to camp on public land and we did not and everything was booked solid. When we were childless we might have (OK, would have ...) thrown caution to the wind and thumbed our noses at those kinds of restrictions, but that's difficult to do when a park ranger might walk into your camp at 11 p.m. and make you go home and you have a toddler in tow. We considered finding a cabin somewhere, but we decided to save the money (and we're consoling ourselves with our TN trip in a little over a week).

So, all that said, we wanted to make the most of our weekend trapped in the concrete jungle. We took a little hike, swung by the spraygrounds (where we and about 50 other people got caught in a thunderstorm downpour -- it was awesome!) and went out to dinner. Just a few pics, including one Jerry took of Wilder and I after coming home from dinner. I very rarely like pictures of myself these days, but this one is OK, and it's a fantastic one of my sweet, sweet boy.

Wilder enjoys his sprayground outing just minutes before the skies opened up and dumped!

On our hike, Wilder finds a small butterfly to marvel over.

Hi hikes! This was the boy's first hike w/o one of us toting him in his backpack. When we turned around due to swarms (literally) of mosquitoes, Wilder cried to go on. This was great -- we've got ourselves a little hiker!

Our post-dinner pic.