Into the Woods

We took another walk in the woods because the weather was nice (briefly). It was Papa's late night at school, so it was just me and the boys. First, they run off down the path and it's evening, so the images are all blurry...
Bastian then jumps from every single stair. Bends his knees:
Pushes off:
Flies through the air:
And lands:
Then he walks a balance beam, green ray gun from Big Fun on election day in hand, as is normal these days.
Aleks crosses the bridge, asks me about trolls. I remind him they're in stories.
Aleks tells me there are fish in the stream, which he would like to catch, but I don't see any and besides, he's vegetarian.
The boys leave the path, meaning that I have to leave the path to make sure they don't tumble down the steep terrain. I carry Bastian up from halfway, nearly sliding down myself.

Shortly after this, I lose Aleks in the woods for about 7-ish minutes, scarring the bejeebus out of me. A teenage girl hiking hadn't seen him and seemed uninterested in helping me. I turn around for one minute to help Bastian come back to the path and Aleks is just gone! Once I find him, we make our way back to the end of the trail where the lean-to was and find four lean-tos instead. We try to help build one of them up, but then it really starts to get dark and I decide better to leave than not be able to see our way back to the parking lot, even if this strip of woods is really small. After having already lost Aleks, I'm a bit snappish with them both, trying to hurry back to the car and get us out of the woods already. We make it back with enough light to still just barely see in front of us and head to the co-op for groceries for dinner. Whew!