Saturday, April 25, 2009

For the Birds

Having a park next door to the house sure is handy. It is definitely turning out to be one of the girls favorite things about living here. We are over at the park almost daily and some days more than once. It is an extension of our back yard, in a way. The merry-go-round still makes me nauseous even if I am just spinning them on it and not even on. The girls could stay on the swings all day and the teeter-totter too. Say that 5x fast.

It got too hot for the birds in the sun so the blankets made it harder to get great pictures.

This is Seymour.


Little blind screech owl. That is our house there in the back of this shot.

Barn Owl.


Big Horned Owl.


Today we got up after a little sleeping in and got ready and went over to the park for Palmyra's Bird Festival. It got into the mid 80s and was breezy. Very nice after such a long winter. There were booths about bird feeders and food to attract birds to your yard as well as plants and flowers for that purpose as well. There were birds from bird rescues, both for pet birds and wild birds that were injured at some point beyond being able to be put back in the wild after healed; like the cockatoo that used to be a performer at Busch Gardens until it attacked it's trainer or the little screech owl is almost completely blind after being hit by a car. We had a lot of fun and we learned a lot too. Serenity looked like she thought it was a little bit of heaven. All the birds were beautiful and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Happy Easter





It has been years, but I let Heidi talk me into sewing Easter dresses with her for the girls. I used to sew all the time in high school and a little bit after, but that last major sewing project I did was my bridesmaid dress and Serenity's flower girl dress for Hanna's wedding. I am sad to realize that I had let go that part of me so long that my girls had never really seen me sew anything more than pillows and blankets.

They didn't even know what a pattern looked like out of the envelope. It was fun to watch how excited and impressed they were by it all, even with my skills a little on the rusty side. They all wanted different colors, so we used the same pattern and their individual colors and they turned out pretty cute. You cannot really tell by the picture, but the dresses are two layers with a more sheer chiffon fabric on top. Both Serenity and Cadence have expressed the desire to learn so that with be fun to teach and share with them something that was very much a part of my growing up.





















Yesterday we also had fun at the town
Easter egg hunt in the park right next
to the house. You might have guessed
by the looks on their faces that it was
FREEZING but they still managed to
have fun























and that sneaky Easter Bunny
even got into the house while
the girls played at the park so
that their baskets were more
than overflowing.