Now we are six - outside everyday?

I've just embarked on a library science class entitled: Literacy, Inquiry, and Nature. We are investigating and writing nature-based programs for libraries. This reminded me that I had a blog oh some years ago where I was trying to get outside everyday... and here I am! What has happened to this idea? It was really a good one! Well, work has happened for one. And school has happened. When the girls started 5 days a week of kindergarten at a local Waldorf school, I started working at the school in the office those same 5 days. And now they are in first grade and I am still in the office. We sometimes manage to walk to school but if we are running late (which is often) we drive. And then there's the fact of the Large, Steep Hill that we live at the top of which none of us particularly likes to walk up at the end of our school/work day. And so our lives have become a bit more inside than I'd like.

Today, thinking of the book The Nature Principle by Richard Louv that I'm reading for the class, I managed to get the girls out of the house right at the juncture wherein they were being creatively destructive with things inside the house. The fabric bins were coming out of the closet and their play clothes were about to be discarded for skimpy dressy dresses when I announced, "We're going outside." NOOOOOOO! But I'm about to put on the yellow dress! I've been outside ALL DAY at school (bold-faced lie). Etc., etc. Luckily I have a good track record of standing my ground so they capitulated with the caveat that they WEREN'T going to put on SOCKS and off we went. Before I knew it, Josie was in the neighbor's backyard with her dad and Addie was off and running to join them. I took the time, despite this nasty cough I have been battling, to walk around the house and just be outside. I'm sure it did wonders for my mood especially when coffee isn't particularly appealing because it makes me cough - which is a tragedy in of itself.

And just yesterday when I asked Addie to run to the backyard and feed the chickens, she disappeared into our other neighbor's yard and came back breathlessly reporting that she was just sitting on the wall and wasn't really in the yard and she was talking to our neighbor -- and then she was off again. Josie, settled cozily into an art project in her "office" was out the back door in a split second, not willing to miss out on adventure. I stuck my head through the fence where the girls were chattering to our neighbor Pia who said they were welcome to come down into their garden (which is huge like a nature preserve full of bamboo and ponds compared to our postage stamp of chicken scratched earth) anytime, that it really wasn't a bother. And they spent about an hour down there while I cleaned the house. These pieces of nature, close to our front and back door, are wonderlands for the children. But I can't help but wonder, am I getting enough nature for myself?