Within the first few days of bringing our first child home (Whitney), we were imagining her future and what she might enjoy in life and the idea of parades came up.  We took her on her first parade with just us, around the block in her stroller with a balloon and some John Phillip Sousa tromboning from a phone.  Every year Whitney has had a parade of some sort as we celebrate her birthday.  We continued the tradition of doing something special on birthdays for each of our kids.

When Dylan came around – a boy! – Tyler was instantly drawn to taking his son out on a “man journey” to start his gentlemanly training.  Each year they’ve had father-son adventures together: hiking, the zoo, the bounce house place and kite flying…

For Leslie, we decided to have a family excursion celebrating natural beauty.  We like the idea of going to a lake or hills or other beautiful place (we’d like to remember the lake near our condo as well as the mountains in Colorado where we stayed this past fall).  I also like the idea of celebrating Leslie’s natural beauty.  I think I want to put flowers in her hair each birthday – at least as long as she’ll let me.

So here is our first Natural Beauty excursion for little Les…we walked around our local lake, snacked on homemade kettle corn, ran around clouds of bubbles and just enjoyed each other and the beautiful afternoon.  I shaped a sort of crown out of some delicate cilantro flowers and purple lavender from the garden.  She was four days old.  It was wonderful!