Treasure Hunting in Snow

The snow had only been coming down for an hour or so this morning when I noticed some interesting, fresh animal tracks outside a 2nd story window. I decided then and there we needed to go out and investigate immediately. So we bundled up over our jammies and headed out, following what were deer tracks and probably bunny tracks all around our house and into the woods. It's so lovely out in the woods on a blizzard morning! The only thing I regret is not heading out sooner, before a lot of the animal tracks were already being covered with fresh snow.

Here are a few of our discoveries:

Two deer tracks crisscrossing (next to our tracks having trudged along beside them):

 

Where Bambi and Thumper met up early this morning:



 

 

It appears the deer lay down here before heading back into the woods? Odd.

 

The deer walked in a heart shape, just in time for Valentine's Day!

This one is hard to see, but there are two deer prints behind her very far apart. There was a section of their trail where they had to have been bounding to have their tracks spaced so far apart.

One of Poppy's piles in the junk graveyard makes a lovely bunny shelter:

These tracks led straight to a bunny home:

 



Bunny's front door. Or maybe it was the back door. Because there were both:

Just tonight for the girls' bedtime story, we are back at the beginning of creation, and I was reminded how God created this world for us. Every element of creation was created beautifully for our enjoyment. Not just green stuff. Not just the summertime. Not just the sun. Even two feet of snow in mid February is created beautifully for our enjoyment if we just take the time to discover it and really see it.

Well, I cannot lie - nature wasn't the only treasure we discovered. I did stumble across an amazing man-made treasure. How on Earth did I not see this until now? It was in a corner of the woods we go into the least and far enough in that I completely missed until it was covered in a big mound of snow.

She cleared it off for a place to rest.

I knew it was hanging around back in the summer when there was lots of construction underway around here. And I had every intention of snagging it. Then it seemed to disappear one day and I figured the workers hauled it off. I was so bummed. Well, surprise, surprise. They just buried it in the woods.

Oh, the possibilities! Do I keep in inside, along the likes of these (because we are still in desperate need of more book storage)?

 

Or do I keep it outside, along the likes of this (because we've outgrown our Little Tykes table)?

 

 



So my plan is to head back out first thing tomorrow morning if the snow isn't too high for my kids to trudge through!