Spring Weekend Happenings

What a wonderful weekend we had! Spring was evident everywhere, the sun was warm and shining, the flowers were blooming,  we played outside and had fun together!

We made several small trips around town this weekend. The first was to the Fiber Arts Festival. I've been waiting for this to come around ever since I found out about it last year!

Such lovely, yummy wool everywhere!

Tunis sheep waiting for the beginning of the herding dog exhibition to begin.

Matthew spent Saturday morning building a pirate ship out of legos. He got out the encyclopedias and looked up a pirate flag (the "Jolly Roger" he informed me!) Then he set to work designing one for his ship.

On Sunday afternoon we took a trip to a local science museum. The boys experimented with everything there at least twice!

 If you look closely at the picture below you can see a little white dot just past the second light fixture next to the dark ceiling. It was a rocket that Matthew and Rodrigo made and were experimenting launching towards each other using a hand powered air cannon.

The roadsides of the highway we travelled to get to the museum were absolutely covered in daffodils and redbud trees. On the way home we pulled over and snapped some pictures. There were thousands of flowers everywhere. We were in awe at the sheer numbers of flowers planted along the roadside. We decided with the children that every year we'll try to plant more daffodils so that eventually our yard surrounding the house will look like this! Simply beautiful!

 Claire wanted to smell ALL of the flowers!

 We are rejoicing in this new season!


Song of Solomon 2: 11-12

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land;

Kissing Trees at the Park

I am sure you are probably wondering why it looks like my children are so intent on kissing this tree at the park... A few other park goers seemed to be wondering the same thing! Well... it all started like this...

We were walking through the park and Matthew wandered over to a tree and put his hand against the trunk to lean on it. "Mom, this tree is all wet!" We looked closer and found all these little rows of holes with fresh sap running out. I told him that it was a maple tree and he asked if the sap was what they made maple syrup out of. I assured him that it was the same, so he asked if he could taste it. I told him he could, one thing led to another and by the time I turned around all three boys where there tasting the sap that was flowing down the trunk of the tree! We talked about how maples are tapped for syrup production up north in New England and in Canada. The said the sap tasted like maple syrup but more watery and less concentrated.

See the little rows of holes in the tree's trunk? The row on top is the freshest, it isn't wet with sap yet, the lower rows are dark and wet with sap running down.  Below is a picture of the bird that made all of those holes. A few minutes after we discovered the maple tree with it's rows of holes we spied this bird busily tapping holes in another maple nearby. It's a male Yellow Bellied Sapsucker. I couldn't get a better picture of him because he kept circling to the back side of the trees when I tried to get in a good spot to see him clearly.

 After watching the Yellow Bellied Sapsucker for a while the little ones ran over to the playground to swing and play.

 Ethan Played with Claire for a while on the teeter-totter. She loved it!

Meanwhile, Logan wandered around nearby searching under the trees for owl pellets and other interesting things.

He didn't find any owl pellets, but he did spot this. A beautiful Red Shouldered Hawk. He was picking at this nest, we watched him for a while trying to decide whether it was an old squirrel's nest he was tearing at, or if he was busy prepping a nest of his own for the coming breeding season. Last summer we watched a pair of these hawks feeding their young in a nest built directly beside the playground! We never did decide which of the two it was.

Back on the playground Matthew was busy taking Claire down the slides. 

She liked it so much that after he was done she kept trying and trying to figure out how to climb back up there on her own.

 Before we left we all played on the swings together. Ethan snapped this picture of Claire and me.

Early Morning ~ School Time

Claire has discovered the joys of sitting at the table with her brothers doing "school". She'll sit for 15 to 30 minutes and draw quietly while they read and write. I can't believe how big she is getting already!

Big, of course, is relative. At 14 months old she is really such a tiny little person, her pediatrician told us she's only in the 20th percentile for her age! All of my children are quite small for their ages. I was a very little child as well.