Daily walk with James

Often times I get stuck in a rut of only taking out my big camera on the weekends. Carrying a camera in addition to taking care of both kids by myself isn't my strong suit. My camera is clunky and heavy and awesome, but because of those reasons I find that all my photos are of just weekend outings.

While weekend outings are spectacular, I also want to remember the day to day. E leaves early (most days by 7:15) and doesn't arrive home until after five. So there are a lot of hours in there that are beautiful and messy and silly and frustrating. While I'm great about documenting these moments on IG with my phone, many times IG photos don't get posted here.

So today, I decided to take my camera out for our daily walk.

For as long as I've had kids I've walked with them. Not every day, but most days. September walks are the best. Horse chestnuts are ready to be collected, grapes are waiting to be picked (lots of grape vines with generous owners) and many times we come home with bags of fruit and veggies that our neighbors have shared.

Most the time our walk route is the same. I've written about the "secret house" a few times; it is a house tucked back behind the subdivisions that I didn't even know about for the first six months of living at our current residence. We love to walk there because the man that rents the basement is our favorite neighbor and the gardens are spectacular.

There is also an irrigation ditch that runs parallel to the secret house. We pretend it's a mountain stream and "fish" everyday off the bridge. Many days in the summer we even get wet. It's not a problem that this little ditch is actually not a stream, and there are not actually fish. We make magic anyway.

The best thing about our neighbor friend is that he always has a candy or two for the kids. It is the sweetest thing.

Today, for the first time ever, our friend asked if the kids wanted to take a ride on the lawnmower. The blade would be turned off, but they were welcome to ride along if they wanted to. Of course both of them couldn't wait.

I don't know this man's last name. He doesn't know ours. But he's known me for almost five years and we've formed quite a friendship. I've seen him through almost losing his leg to infection and he's seen me through raising two really great kids. It's fun to have a friend like that.

Especially when they make my kids smile like this.

Neighborhood walks are the best. And today we came home with a bag bursting with grapes, green beans, tomatoes and candies of course. Always candies. (And one more favorite post about this neighbor, just for good measure).

And, if you're on IG, one of my favorite hash tags of all is #dailywalkwithjames. Lots of joy comes from this part of our days.