Calvert Cliffs State Park

I had a wonderful mother's day with my boys yesterday! First thing in the morning, they brought me a doughnut, coffee and my crossword book and told me that I had to stay in bed until they could bring me my surprise. (As a side note: A few weeks ago, I told the boys that for father's day I wanted to buy Ed a waffle maker since he always makes the waffles whenever we stay at a hotel. Apparently they thought that was a great idea because they told Ed that they wanted to get me a waffle maker for mother's day! ha!) The boys helped Ed mix up the waffle batter and eventually they brought a waffle up for me. They were so proud and sweet!

We also had some old friends visiting Saturday night that we knew while we lived in Alaska. David is still in the Army and he and Wendi are on their way to Egypt for a year! They are an incredible couple and it was really fun to catch up with them. We sat around talking late on Saturday and until about noon on Sunday when they had to leave.

Sunday afternoon I decided to take the boys to Calvert Cliffs State Park where you can hike down to the beach and look for shark's teeth. We picked up McDonald's for lunch and had a picnic. Then the kids played on the playground for a bit before we started our hike. It was a 1.8 mile trail to get to the beach but I was hoping the kids could do it. As we reached the one mile mark I decided this may have been too ambitious but we were already more than halfway there so I decided to keep going. At the 1.3 mile, I was really worried but decided the boys would be more of a pain on the walk back if they didn't even get to see the beach so again we kept trucking. They were very glad to make it to the beach and we found some rocks and shells but nothing too interesting. They could have stayed there for an hour but I was already dreading the walk back so we only stayed about 30 minutes or so. The walk back was rough for the first half mile, then we started playing "tag". You should know that in Nolen's version of tag, there is no way for him to be tagged. Ever. I would give them a head start to run down the trail while I counted to 10. As soon as I started running to catch them, they would touch a tree and call it base. So, when I caught up to them I would give them another head start and they would find another "base". It was a pretty boring game of tag but they loved it and we finished the hike in record time. ha!

Some other things to note...we saw one snake, one beaver dam, I had 2 ticks crawling on me and Nolen had one on him even after we wore bug spray, I checked him twice and gave him a bath (I sent them to Edward for a final check and he found it). Also, when I started the van to leave, I still had my door open and I saw a small animal scurry away from under the van. At first I thought it was a bird but it was a MOUSE! I could see his little tail as he ran away. Yuck! Now that's nature!

Playing on the tire park before we started our hike.

Running down the trail. It was a gorgeous green day! At one point the leaf canopy was so bright green and thick that we all looked green standing on the trail!

The boys on the beach with the cliffs in the background.

I hope all of my mom friends and especially my own mom had wonderful mother's days yesterday!