#keehnerpark

Ashley, the girls, and I took advantage of yesterday's eighty-degree weather and went tramping around the creek at Keehner Park. It looked wildly different than last time Chloe and I went exploring: the snow has melted, the trees are blooming, and the creek's running high from all the rains last week. Chloe followed my lead and waded through the creek, looking for fish and snakes. We tried catching crawdads but failed. Chloe wanted to climb some "cliffs" (steep embankments), and Zoey was jealous and tried climbing, too. She succeeded, with Ashley spotting her. The girl loves to climb; she's a monkey. On down the creek a ways we came to what I call "the watering hole": the creek gets to be about five feet deep, perfect for swimming. Chloe refused to go in at first, fearful of the water; but once I led the way, she was all about it. We swam for a while and Ashley took some videos. We tried scaling a wall of mud and ended up getting coated like hippos at the peak of summer. We washed off in the water (flashbacks of Crank's Creek!), and I won't lie: I felt rather exfoliated. A storm rolled through as we were drying off, the wind blowing the leaves off the trees and the rain coming down in hammering sheets. By the time we got back to the car, we were soaked and shivering but happy.

I can't begin to express how excited I am that spring is warming up. Ashley and I have avowed that this summer we will explore all the nature preserves around Cincinnati. It's good for the girls to be torn away from their TV shows and tablets and technological trimmings to just immerse in nature and to see that you don't need to be in front of a screen to have a good time. I'm a man and I like to sweat and get dirty, and if things with Ashley keep going well, I'm intent on helping to raise two women who appreciate the outdoors as much as we do. "Thank you for being so amazing with my girls," Ashley said; "Their own father refused to even take them to the Zoo. All he ever did was watch TV and neglect them. It's good to know that men like you are still around!" Encouraging words, indeed.