Today was the kind of day I love to have with my daughter.  She was happy and bubbly from the moment she woke up and just so excited to be alive.  Even though her "awakening" happened at 5:00 am, she was full of vigor.  So we sat in the kitchen together and chatted about what the day would hold, what we might learn at church today, what to eat for breakfast and how Dad was sleeping in for a change.  We put on some dress up clothes and had an early morning tea with our cereal and scrambled eggs and then headed out to pick what blackberries we could find.  The path to the blackberries is long for an almost 3 year old!..  We walked across the yard through one of the flower beds and examined the first Cactus Dahlia blooming, smelled one of the roses and saw a beautiful Swallowtail butterfly.  All the while, giggling and touching and just enjoying the beauty of God's creation together (and Dad was peeking out of the window from the bedroom as he stayed snuggled in even though he doesn't know I saw him).  We ran down the driveway to the culvert and stood on top throwing rocks so that they bounced off the corrogated pipe and kerplunked into the water.  A little further along and we stopped to examine the different footprints in the mud.  There were Killdeer tracks, Deer tracks, Coon tracks and Hannah tracks.  She squatted down real low to the ground, like small children do, and contemplated the different tracks and then looked up with her clear blue eyes and curls dancing around her face and giggled as she pointed her little finger into the palm of the raccoon track.  Along the road we went until we cut across the dewy grass toward the cemetery and stopped briefly to pick some clover flowers and taste the sweetness at the ends of the petals.  She bounced along the edge of the cemetery while I picked some berries and then as I got further along she ran up and suggested that she could " hold the bucket for me so it wouldn't be so hard for me", (As her little hand grabbed up the berries as fast as I put them in the bucket).  We picked berries and picked berries.  She did a wonderful job of selecting the ripe berries from the bushes on the edge that she could reach and waited so patiently for me when I climbed into the stickers to get the berries in the back.  Then we walked down the edge of the soybean field looking for more berries and we found three feathers...a Turkey, a Dove, and a Red Tail Hawk.  There were more berries along the way and finally we headed back toward the house. At her prodding, we followed our dog into the coolness of the woods to do some more exploring.  We found some pine cones that had been stripped clean and beds of needles all over the pinewoods floor.  I had the bright idea we should take a "short cut" down the hillside to the almost dried up creek and though it had rained 2 days prior, I did not consider that the slope would be damp at all.  The hillside descends steeply to the creek and the deer trails all go sideways down the slope rather than straight down.  She followed closely behind me, hanging onto my sweatpants and we slid our way down the hillside less than gracefully.  At the bottom we explored the rocks in creek bottom and found some interesting rocks that were hollowed out and one that looked like it had been split in half with the perfect shape of a square left in the middle.  We decided to put those in my sweatpant pockets to show Dad.  We navigated our way up the bank and along an ATV trail where there was promise of more berries and she climbed up on an old tree that was lying in the field and she and the dog explored the crevices until they found what looked like a mouse nest lined with milkweed seeds.  Lastly, as we wandered back to the house with our handful of blackberries for Dad, she decided we should pick some Queen Ann's Lace so Dad could have some flowers.  She was a sight with her blackberry ring around her mouth, her little curls all ascew and little briars stuck in her hair, but her smile was priceless and it is a day I will not soon forget.