Some of my best childhood memories involve me and the outdoors.   I remember trudging through the marshes at the Arboretum as a child.  I remember looking for spit bugs, holding milk weed pods, taking apart cat tails and collecting fistfuls of wild flowers.  Josh and I spent many afternoons riding our bike through the unmarked trails of Hidden Lake and climbing through pipes in search of small streams after it rained.  There was so much fun to be had outside, unsupervised with nary a bottle of hand sanitizer in sight!  I want the girls to have those same experiences, but lest I be accused of child neglect, I thought we could slowly wade into these waters of outdoor exploration.  Yesterday, we spent our morning at the Morton Arboretum.  I signed up the girls for a class on dragonflies.  It was organized, instructive and supervised, yet the girls had fun.  Here is Ella holding a dragonfly nymph as Viv looks enviously on.