Wintry Walks

The weather has been extremely cold yet entirely beautiful the past few weeks so the boys and I have taken to taking late afternoon walks around the neighborhood and down to the lake after nap and snack. It's really quite fun because Alexander is now showing a bit more of his independence because he hardly lets me carry him along the way and will only tolerate it if he is starting to tire. We encounter sounds and sights that typical civilians wouldn't encounter on afternoon walks. Chinook helicopters and C1-30 cargo planes constantly fly over our neighbor hood and occasionally men will parachute out of them and into the lake for trainings which is really fun to watch. Now the sounds are mainly loud POPS of gunfire in the not so distant woods and loud BOOMS from large arterially being launched off. Now the gunfire we are all used to but the large booms scare all three of u at first until we get used to them in the distance. It's funny living on an Army base because even though the war is not here one would not guess that by living here for a week because sometimes is sounds like WE are under attack. Now the pictures above are from today when we walked down to the lake to feed the birds. Ayden prided himself on carrying the bag of bread all the way down to the lake. But as you can see he considered feeding the birds as secondary to feeding himself and proceeded to sit on the bank of the lake the whole time munching on bread while I threw chunks out to the gulls and ducks. Alex just enjoyed watching all of the gulls swoop in and snatch the bread out of the water and then fly away.