Saturday at our House

Saturdays around here vary from work oriented (not one of the kids favorites) to pure fun. Most are a mixture and somewhere in between. Since we had problems with flooding due to a burst water pipe above us (nothing ruined or even damaged) I decided to hold off on the cleaning. They have to come replace the carpet and ceiling in some places, so why bother when it is just going to get dusty again.

Instead the kids came up with somethings to keep themselves entertained. Jakob decided to learn to make a pumpkin pie. I had all of the fixings, even a pre-made crust, so he was able to do it all himself, with a little tutorial on how to crimp the edges. Here is the finished product.



Ethan and Sophia decided to take up pairs "ice skating" after an afternoon of watching some on tv. They donned their socks and 'skated' around the kitchen tile. It was hilarious to watch. I had a video I was going to post, but I can't figure out how to do that yet, so this still photo will have to do and you'll just have to use your imaginations on the rest.

A Superstar

I'm not actually sure if anyone is reading this or not, but I wanted to include a link to someone I think is a superstar. I've told many of you about the daughter of some friends of ours here in Nashville. They have since moved up to Shippensburg, PA. Their youngest daughter, Marian, has had complicated health issues in her short 6 years and is now preparing for a bone marrow transplant in March. In preperation for this she is raising money for craft/art supplies, not only for herself (she has to go through chemo to kill off her immune system so all supplies have to be new), but also for a charity that collects new supplies to donate to children in the hospital. Marian is calling this 'Project Superstar' and has several neat crafty things to sell. If you want to take a look her blog is http://imacraftartist.blogspot.com/. Her mom's is http://purplepetunia.blogspot.com/. Check it out, if only to see the story of an amazing little girl.

Bird Watching

This is one of the reasons I love where we live. All winter we get to view these impressive birds. It never ceases to amaze me when I see a bright red cardinal sitting in the dull brown branches. At the nature center, they have a bird blind where you put out seed and sit behind this wall with slits to see who comes and visits. On this visit we saw not only male and female cardinals, but a white breasted nuthatch, a red bellied woodpecker, chickadees, towhee, finches and probably more. This is one of our favorite things to do.

Let Me Know

Just curious whether or not anyone but me can read this. I'm new to this blog thing and not sure if I have the settings right. So if you can, try to respond. Click on comments. If you can't just send me an email.

Go Ahead and Try

Today was a fun day, more or less. I just wish I would have had my camera for the fun moments. Today we (the kids and I) were the only ones willing to brave the cold (really not that cold) to take part in one of the programs that the amazing Nature Center puts on. It was a 'foray' to Indian Springs, part of Percy Warner Park. Really we followed the person and looked for neat stuff, while dodging, ducking and climbing over things on a not so worn deer path. Since we were the only ones, Kim paid a lot of attention to us. She answered all of the kids questions, stopped to look at what they discovered and was really quite attentive.
The kids found some neat stuff. The neatest was probably an antler shed by a buck, found by Jakob. Once Sophia learned what 'scat' is, she found lots of deer scat. Ethan was good at finding things like broken acorn piles and piles of blue jay leaves left behind by hawks. It really was like a big scavenger hunt.
By the end the kids were getting a little tired and hungry so we happily went home. Hats off to the Nature Center for giving us the time. It's fun to get out and see nature, especially when you live in a city.

It's New to Me

This is the first attempt at creating a blog, which is an effort to keep everyone updated with our life. Really it's not that an exciting of a life, but this way we can at least share our pictures and things going on in our life. Once I get a little more familiar with how things work, I'll venture out and let the kids have their own blogs, where they can share what they would like.