Troll Houses, Creek Jumping, and a Picnic

Today we went to the park. We are so blessed in this area of the world to have fabulous parks to play in and explore. We had the park practically to ourselves all afternoon, it was great! The boys packed us a picnic lunch, and off we went with everyone's conveyance of choice.

While there they decided to explore the wetland areas. They saw frogs and ducks and lots of spring blooming wild flowers.

It was there that Matthew found many charming little burrows made out of mud. He asked me what built them and I explained how crayfish dig burrows from the walls of the creek beds underwater and move inland. They are quite the little earthmovers. They have little homes with a front door and a back door just like people. He told me that he thought it would make a perfect troll house! He then spent a while telling me all about how the trolls would move in when the crayfish were done, and why they needed houses just like those.

They even found a little water snake! Logan held it for a few minutes so I could get a good shot of him then he let it go again, right by where it came from.

We found a nice shady spot and stopped to have our picnic. Everything tases better outdoors!

After that they were off to climb rocks and explore for a bit, while Claire and I relaxed and watched them play.

Suddenly someone had a great idea! "Mom, take pictures of us jumping the creek!"

So I did! Such fun to be a kid and jump just because you can! *note to self... jumping creeks is fun! I must do it more often!*

Claire had lots of fun too. Snuggling with mommy in the warm sunshine and watching brothers run and play and yell. She even made an exciting new discovery of her own! TOES! She has toes! And she can even reach them! If she tries really hard sometimes she can even get them all the way to her mouth to suck on! What great things toes are!!

We had a wonderful day! I hope you did too!

Watercolors al fresco

This morning the boys decided to take their watercolors and papers outside to enjoy the dappled sunshine on our back porch.

Popcorn and milk

Last week I was reading a book to the boys titled Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (It's one of the Little House On The Praire books) In the book the littel boy Almonzo, talks about how popcorn and milk are the only two things that can occupy the exact same place. He stated that if you filled up a glass with milk and filled another glass with an equal amount of popcorn, you coud then add the popcorn piece by piece and the glass of milk would not overflow. The same could not be done with bread and milk he said. Of course, as soon as we where done reading for the morning, the boys asked if we could repeat the experiment. We pulled out the popper and the bag of popcorn kernals and got busy! Ethan really didn't grasp the whole concept at first and was busily dunking his popcorn in the milk and eating it just like that!   

The experiment was a resounding success! The milk did not overflow at all. (We didn't have enough glasses all the same size so we just measured the milk and popcorn in and added it to 6 glassses for the boys.)

After we finished they wanted to drink the popcorn and milk concoction.

 Everyone decided that it was pretty darn yummy! Better that most breakfast cereals the've tried!