The kids and I enjoyed a lovely walk today at the state park. I think I'll share some of the details from that walk scattered throughout this post along with the photos. You know, because I took 107 photos - all in manual mode - I know you're impressed! And no, not all of them look good.

An example of a really great photo that ended up over exposed:

Using manual on the kids is hard because if I get it wrong the first time the subsequent photos with the right exposure are not going to be with the same pose which can be really frustrating!

The kids and I walked 3.5 miles (give or take a couple tenths) as there is one section of the map that is not marked for mileage.

Rory fell and I tried to distract her so she'd stop crying by asking her where it hurt. Imagine my surprise when she yelled back, "MY BUTT CRACK!"

This took us over 2 hours, and yes, I did have the stroller for Rory otherwise we would have never made it out by nightfall. She loves to doddle.

We sang songs on the last trek of our walk. I was taking requests so when Max asked that I sing the "gurl, look at that body" song, I obliged and sang I'm Sexy and I Know it by LMFAO. We did a lot of wiggling during that song. (For the record, I've trained my kids to scream "Daddy's song" whenever this comes on the radio. I don't think I will ever achieve something this great again.)

Both kids fell into puddles. Rory fell first and she somehow had the smarts to keep her butt in the air resulting in very little damage.

Max fell into a much larger puddle and got drenched. He decided we should continue on to the waterfall but only stay for "6 minutes".

When we started our walk it was 54 degrees; when we returned it was 44. Of course, this is off my car thermometer so I can't promise just how accurate it was but you get the idea.

We saw dozens of swans - we counted 6 separate groupings that flew overhead as we neared the end. They have a unique honk sound that can really scare you if you don't know they're coming!

The reason the swans look pink? The sun was setting just past the tree line and that was the color reflecting off of them. How cool is that?!