No jackets?!

and the sun?! Now that's more like it.

Easter morning

Saturday afternoon -

We're still pretending it's warm. Bikes, tennis....drawing on spare pieces of wood in the garage...(ok so Maya was the only one doing that)

Saturday - Coloring Eggs

I love reading posts and tutorials about naturally dying eggs. There was a good post here:

Soule Mama Natural Egg Dyes and here: Crunchy Domestic Goddess Egg Tutorial.

And then I go and bye an egg dying kit for $1.49.

Some day, some year, we will try this - it sounds fun and I like the science project aspect of trying out different things to see what colors you get. But so far it has just seemed expensive and messy.

But this year it was Dudley. And everyone had a great time.

About that video

The only way I could get it to upload was by using photobucket. Since it is a free service you don't have a whole lot of control over features. After the video plays photobucket automatically recommends other videos it claims are similar. Don't click on them. I highly doubt they are similar in any way especially when half of the screen names include "sexxy" and they certainly are not ours.

Really....it's nice outside.....

Ok, not really. It's not snowing. It's not raining. That's about all the positives I can think of. But we put on coats. And usually hats. And go out anyway.

Maya has had a "balancing bike" for over a year now. It's a little bike frame with no pedals so she can get use to the idea of the balance and not get reliant on the training wheels. Alex started off on a little bike with training wheels and he really, really wants to ride a two wheeler but freaks out about the tipping feeling. So this weekend we took the pedals off his bike too and he is trying the balancing bike idea out.

It's given him a lot of confidence and today they were getting quite daring and coasting down the hill in the front yard.

(on a side note this is the first time we have put a video in the blog! Alex's digital camera takes videos that we can actually upload to this computer - we have operating system and software incompatibility issues with our older video camera)

Not exactly what we were going for...

So instead of the babysitter taking the kids outside to ride bikes and play in the sandbox on Wednesday she had to take them outside to make a snowman.

The snowman has melted now into a pile of snow. Most of the snow is gone as of today (Friday) but there is still some left in the woods and in piles here and there.

We did go outside today and ride bikes, planted the 2 trees Alex got at school this week and put out some bird "snacks" but the wind is cold and it is gray and gloomy.

We could really use some real spring.

April 19th and 20th 2011

This is what we had going on outside before bed Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning there was a lot more snow plus a few layers of ice. All the tree branches were bent down to the ground. Alex had a snow day on April 20th!

We were not impressed.

Something fun

This is a jar from salad dressing. I had saved it a long time ago because the jar was a nice shape and weight but had never used it for anything because the lid was ugly, and plastic.

Not anymore!

Well, underneath it's still ugly and plastic. But it now looks much more interesting.

My mom was given this idea to cover jar lids or Altoid mint tins with beads from a friend of hers who learned from someone else, who heard about it from....well, you get the idea.

You use double sided craft tape (like Provo Craft brand "Terrifically Tacky Tape") and strings of beads and then cover the whole thing with something like Modge Podge.

I haven't put the Modge Podge on this yet.

We read one blog that recommended stringing the beads on fishing line because it's cheap and easy to find. I used some beading thread because I happen to have a lot of it but I can see how fishing line would work well.

It was fun, it isn't a really fast project but something you can work on for a little while and set it aside and then pick it up again later.

Sunday symphony

Sunday afternoon I took the kids to the City Opera House for the TSO Family concert.

I had taken Alex a couple times before when he was 3 and 4 but it had been a while and this was Maya's first time.

They both loved it!

Before the actual concert starts there is a chance to touch and try some instruments and some other activities including a visit from a mascot in a bear costume. Alex is old enough now that the chaos and noise doesn't bother him. He got to try out a violin and the look on his face was priceless. ( The photographer from the TSO snapped a wonderful picture of him, I have no idea if I'll be able to track down a copy or not.)

It was a bit much for Maya though. The bear terrified her and the noise was overwhelming.

Once we got in the theater and seated though she was fine.

They both tapped their feet and bobbed their heads along with the Mozart the whole time. It was so much fun to see them enjoy it so much.

This weekend

Well, the weather is no longer really great for outdoor play. It's been cold, very windy and wet (either rain or snow or a combination of the two). Thankfully we had some fun inside things available to do this weekend.

Saturday morning Maya had dance class. Alex and I stayed home and played legos while Ben took her to dance.

After lunch we went over to the local library branch to see a presentation from Wings of Wonder, a local raptor rehabilitation facility. Their presentations are so cool. The kids love it and the grown ups love it just as much.

Alex brought his camera but was so mesmerized by the presentation he forgot to take any pictures of the birds!

When owls and some other Raptors digest their food their body takes all the parts that don't digest like bones, fur, feathers, etc. and makes a pellet out of it which the Raptor then coughs up and spits out. You can open the pellets and find the bones inside and try to reassemble the skeleton of the prey.

Both Alex and Maya wanted to try this so we got two pellets at the presentation. Later that afternoon Ben sat down with them to cut them open. Maya was totally into it. She was digging right in there. Poor Alex wanted to be into it but as soon as Ben cut the pellet open he started gagging (there was no smell, but he was convinced it was something that *should* smell bad) and he wouldn't touch it. So he would cough and gag and then Ben would find a bone and he'd yell "Whoa, cool!!" cough, gag......"Awesome!"...cough, gag.... He did a really good job identifying the bones on the bone chart that came with it.

Neither of our pellets had a full skeleton inside or a skull. But we did have some jaw bones and some other larger bones they could easily identify.

A week ago sunday

The way it stands right now it appears we had spring, summer and fall all last week and are now headed firmly back into winter!

It's hard to believe this was a week ago and it ended up quite hot that day. We hung our freshly painted bird houses and spent the whole day playing outside.

We've had some very high winds in the past week and only one bird house fell down so we figure they should be able to withstand anything.