Do They Know They're In Westchester?

Spring seems to officially be here - the flowers are blooming, the windows are open, and the kids are begging to wear shorts. To celebrate this beautiful day, we took the family out for a special lunch to one of the kids' favorite destinations - Costco. Yes, you read that right - Costco. My children seem to think it's Disneyland (the fact that we've never taken them to Disneyland probably helps reinforce this). They get to eat a hot dog (we're vegetarian, but when we go out, we let the kids choose what they would like - if they could order meat with a side of meat and some meat for dessert, they would be in heaven) and then get to wander through the store and hunt for samples. They take sample hunting very seriously; generally on the car ride over they have a preliminary discussion about what the samples will be, involving their favorite samples, as well as the infamous day last year when we went at dinnertime, and there were no samples. NO SAMPLES! The level of incredulity on their little faces was hard to believe. Luckily there were excellent samples to be had (we did not actually purchase any groceries) and everyone was happy.

We then moved on to the outdoor portion of the day - there is a beautiful nature preserve just down the road, which is situated in the middle of a very populous area. I imagine that the land developers weep every time they drive by it - all this land situated in one of the most expensive areas of the country, with waterfront to boot. We got to see this:

Miss Serious and Big Trouble were tracking it by finding hoofprints:


And then we saw this:

I approached it very cautiously for fear that it would run away, but I needn't have worried; this was apparently one of the more brazen wild turkeys out there, and didn't even look up as I got closer. In fact, after a bit of a stare down, I ended up backing slowly away - wild turkeys are quite large.

The juxtaposition of all this wonderful wildlife being around the corner from a Commerce Bank is definitely odd, but certainly appreciated. Sadly, when I asked the kids what their favorite part of the day was, Costco won hands down. But at least they got to wear their shorts outside.