Autumnal Walk

Local time: 7.15am. Yesterday, after meeting up with some friends of Mom's for lunch, we decided to head out to the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge. We were originally intending to take their little tram tour around the area, but found they weren't running on weekdays after school started, so we ended up doing a nice walk around the lake - much prettier than the tram ride would have been anyway. We saw a large variety of birds, most unidentifiable, except for the heron, and a chipmunk and the coup de grace of wildlife - a black snake. Poor snake, Mom stepped on him. Geoff was disappointed not to see him, as he's never seen a snake in the wild (England not being big on snakes). It was a lovely day until the end, when Olivia got sick - I think this is the bug that Alex had last week and Sarah had Wednesday on the plane - Olivia always gets these things worse than the other kids. She's fine now, though she spent a long time yesterday evening throwin up, poor thing.