new routines

Saturday is a day when new routines are often formed. Farmhouse family visits, market forays, pool splash -- summer staples all -- are now being replaced by "breakfast with the girls." The kids are following new schedules and one includes a weekend morning class for Snowdrop. Following this, she and her mom head for a nearby coffee shop for a breakfast meetup with gogs.

Thus my morning yard work is sprightly! No dallying today. Well, a pause for just a few pics...

(Happy has taken to resting in the morning in the tub. Don't know why!)

And I wave to Ed and head out. 

Hi, girls!

It's another brilliant day -- perfect for a croissant outside.Well, for me. Snowdrop already had her breakfast. She settles for a cookie.

With an occasional snatch of pieces of my croissant.

 

 

 

A rainbow kind of a morning! 

Unfortunately, this particular cafe is very close to Snowdrop's very favorite cupcake store... She'd already downed a bit of a cookie. Can she handle a cupcake? No, she can never do more than a few bites. But those few bites are just so good

And it's only natural for her to come back with me to the farmhouse. I have some newish books, a new Lego set to build, and of course, there are her standby favorite story telling set ups...

When it's time to head home, we pick some flowers for mommy's dinner table...

And in the late afternoon, Ed and I do a tiny adventure: we head out to a place that's just a half hour drive from us, but we've never been there, possibly because you have to take the super highway to get to it and we both will choose a rural road journey over the super highways any day (it would take too long to go the rural way for this trip).

It's called the Goose Pond Sanctuary and it is under the stewardship of the Madison Audubon Society (read about it here). Wetlands, prairies, and a large pond. More like a lake really.

With migratory swans (or snowy egerts?)...

Sandhills...

And fields of prairie and trails cutting through them...

At the edges, the prairie abruptly ends and the landscape turns into one with vast swaths of densely planed corn.

So Wisconsin!

Though perhaps Goose Pond should be called Swan Lake? Just a thought...

At home again, Ed says -- you know, maybe in September we should hike a trail just a little bit closer to home. To cut back on that six hour drive...

No! You mean we are back to square one?? That cannot be! But I already found us a cottage!

(insert dramatic Swan Lake music here...)

Travel with Ed is never without surprises.