The Circle K at the edge of our neighborhood is exactly one mile from our house, so it's a 2-mile round trip.  On Thursday morning, I woke up and walked those two miles before my doctor's appointment.  I left at 6:46 a.m. and returned at 7:20, so it took me 34 minutes to walk the distance, a 17 minute average - not exactly a record-breaking time, but not too terribly shabby considering a few short months ago the very fastest I could walk was about a 21 minute mile.  On Friday morning, the girls and I followed the same path for our walk.  It took us two hours...yep, that's right a 60-minute-mile.  That has to be the slowest pace ever!  Now, we did have a false start...we got about half a block down the street and I realized that I forgot the memory card for my camera so we had to turn around and come back.  While I ran in to grab it, I left the girls in the front porch swing.  Here's Abigail:


And yes, those would be tights and patent leather shoes that she has on for our walk.  And the answer would be yes, she did dress herself.  I'm thinking that my girl likes pink   It took a few minutes to convince the girls to leave the swing and start our walk again and while I was convincing, I was snapping pictures.  Here is a persimmon on the tree in our front yard (this is the tree that we were sure would never bear fruit again after Hurrican Ivan stripped it of its bark and leaves, but it surprised us!)


Finally, we were ready to walk.  We made it to the end of our street and turned the corner onto the the road that runs along the water.  The girls love this street - there are some beautiful yards all along it and they love to stick their feet in the grass (I try, honestly I do, to keep them from playing in other people's yards and most of the time, I manage to keep them at least in the public right-of-way, but sometimes, I end up chasing them into the middle our neighbors' yards...I'm telling you, if we're ever arrested, it's going to be for trespassing or possibly shoplifting, but that's a different story for a different time).  Anyway, Friday morning, Abigail simply could not resist one of the yards...on top of lush green grass (which I think she loves as much as she love pink), the yard was also sporting a fine mist sprinkler that morning and my baby cannot pass up an opportunity to get wet.  I kept her down pretty close to the street and let her cool off


I mean really, how could I possibly deny her this joy (and I'm hoping that if the person who belongs to this yard happend along and saw this look on her face that he/she would excuse this one act of tresspass )


Finally, I convinced her that we needed to keep walking and she came back into the street.  Only, now we had a small problem.  Look at her legs:


Yep, wet tights and wet patent leather shoes.  If you've never had the thrill of wearing wet tights or hose, let me tell you, it's not exactly comfortable and on a hot, very humid day...it's not exactly cool either.  Abigail was not a happy camper, so there, in the middle of the road, I stripped her down to her diaper and that's the way she finished the rest of our walk.  Now, you might be wondering where my oldest child was during this caper.  Well, she was sitting the stroller and when I asked her why she wasn't in the sprinkler, she very primly informed me, "I do not like to get wet."  I guffawed and rolled my eyes and reminded her that she begs, every day, to swim in the pool or at the lake or to go to the water park.  "WELL," she said indignantly, "I don't like to get wet by sprinklers."  Yeah, that sounds like a likely story. 

We finally made it all the way down to the convenience store and back, but I spent the last few minutes of our walk chasing this little guy. 

So, there you have it...how my walking pace can go from a 17-minute-mile on one day to a 60-minute-mile the next....I have a secret to tell you, though....the 60-minute-mile was a lot more fun