For the birds

Of all the fun places we have here in Kansas for Christopher to play, I believe his favorite has to be the trail by our house. The trail system out here is fantastic and the particular trail we go to is 15 miles long in total.  (No he hasn't walked the whole thing yet, but he did walk over a mile and a half straight on Saturday when it was so nice out!) Over the past week, we have gone to different parts of this trail literally every day. Chris loves to walk, run, and explore on the trail. We've even hiked up an unpaved part to the top of a ridge to watch the trains go by! (On his way up, CJ says, "I think I can, I think I can" during the steep parts).  I often come home with my pockets full of Christopher's treasures that he finds along the way. We've explored the trail so much that Chris is becoming a birding expert. There are tons of birds to see there including red tail hawks, great blue herons, ducks, geese, blue jays, cardinals, etc. We've also seen some beautiful woodpeckers-- two different types in fact. One is the red-headed woodpecker and the other is the red-bellied woodpecker. They don't look very different from each other, but Chris knows the difference. When we were watching our bird feeder in the backyard today, one of them flew onto it. Chris says, "Red-bellied woodpecker, Mommy!" and indeed he was correct.

As much as he loves being out in nature, his favorite part of the trail is the "choo-choos" he gets to see there. We were fortunate enough to see five trains while at the trail this morning and a very cool thing happened with one of them. We were out in the open and Chris was standing there watching the train go slowly by. The driver must have seen him because he opened the engine's window, waved to us, and blew the horn especially for CJ! You can imagine how excited our little man was as he waved back and gave his own best "choo choo!" It was a fun morning!