We found this guy on a walking path yesterday.
Mark is about to embark on a horrible, strenuous work schedule. He'll be working second shift 12 hour days, six days a week right though Halloween and, probably, Thanksgiving. We will see him in the mornings and he will be increasingly exhausted as time goes on. It can't be helped, but we dread this time each year. It's a strain on him and on the family.
He wanted to take the full day off yesterday, his last work day before the outage schedule begins, but he was scheduled for a meeting he couldn't get out of. Then we decided to meet for lunch and go to Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. It's hard to be spontaneous as a family when our schedule is so full - our homeschooled children are so well socialized we had to pull back this year!
Midewin is a work in progress. It was first prairie and occupied by Native Americans, then it was farmland after the Blackhawk War in the 1830s. During World War II, the land was appropriated by the government for an ammunition plant and storage facility. They built huge cement bunkers, filled them with arms and planted grass over them to conceal them from spy planes. In 1996 the land was acquired by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service. The army cleaned up after years of TNT manufacturing and the prairie is slowly being restored. It's a huge area - over 19,000 acres - and a huge project. Only a small portion is open to the public.
We hiked along what seemed to be a old property dividing line, judging by the row of osage orange trees. The kids really liked the oranges, calling them brains. The Little Man objected strongly to calling them oranges because they are green. The place was literally hopping with crickets and ladybugs. Buddy spotted the praying mantis on the path before we all almost tramped over it.
It's good to let our hair down and do things on the spur of the moment every once in a while!
Mark is about to embark on a horrible, strenuous work schedule. He'll be working second shift 12 hour days, six days a week right though Halloween and, probably, Thanksgiving. We will see him in the mornings and he will be increasingly exhausted as time goes on. It can't be helped, but we dread this time each year. It's a strain on him and on the family.
He wanted to take the full day off yesterday, his last work day before the outage schedule begins, but he was scheduled for a meeting he couldn't get out of. Then we decided to meet for lunch and go to Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. It's hard to be spontaneous as a family when our schedule is so full - our homeschooled children are so well socialized we had to pull back this year!
Midewin is a work in progress. It was first prairie and occupied by Native Americans, then it was farmland after the Blackhawk War in the 1830s. During World War II, the land was appropriated by the government for an ammunition plant and storage facility. They built huge cement bunkers, filled them with arms and planted grass over them to conceal them from spy planes. In 1996 the land was acquired by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service. The army cleaned up after years of TNT manufacturing and the prairie is slowly being restored. It's a huge area - over 19,000 acres - and a huge project. Only a small portion is open to the public.
We hiked along what seemed to be a old property dividing line, judging by the row of osage orange trees. The kids really liked the oranges, calling them brains. The Little Man objected strongly to calling them oranges because they are green. The place was literally hopping with crickets and ladybugs. Buddy spotted the praying mantis on the path before we all almost tramped over it.
It's good to let our hair down and do things on the spur of the moment every once in a while!
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