Lookin' out my backdoor

I love traveling. And I love traveling with my kids, even though the actual process of being on a long-haul flight, or traveling with them for 20+ hours on two or three flights, isn't exactly relaxing. If I had the resources, we'd be traveling a lot more with them, ticking off my dream destinations a little faster...

However, I really don't have to go very far to have a great time with my kids, though I sometimes don't appreciate that fact enough.  On a nice sunny day, and today was such a day, our backyard can be a fantastic destination: no packing, passports, lineups or body scanners required.

To the kids, the backyard can be a great adventure that lasts all day. Popular backyard activities at our place include:

• making mud, 
• digging up worms and moving them to the shady grass under the trampoline, 
• watering the flowers, 
• bouncing and doing flips and tumbles on the trampoline, 
• fighting until somebody cries and comes running for mommy-intervention,
• filling a wagon with rocks or dirt or weeds or water and pulling it around the yard,
• sitting on the swings, 
• gathering rocks under the deck, 
• trapping bugs in an acrylic glass
• turning the hose on each other,
• blowing soap bubbles,
• playing tag

Unplanning really can be the best thing, and the backyard is great for that.

When we first moved into our house I spent many days with my son, then 2 1/2, just laying in the grass and looking up at the sky and the airplanes. He was fascinated by the airplanes then and that hasn't changed.

These days my favorite activity when I'm in the backyard with the kids is to lay down on the trampoline while they bounce around me. It's oddly relaxing.

Or I like to sit on the deck and watch them while they go all over the backyard, part of them moving through the real world, the other part traveling somewhere else entirely: Worm World, Bug Land, or Mud Lake.

Not a bad way to travel with kids.