L. grabbed the camera yesterday morning and snapped a few photos of the birds at our feeder in the front yard. She absolutely could not eat breakfast or get dressed until she took a few photos.
Needless to say, no one got out the door on time yesterday. But I do admit, watching the birds was a nice way to start our day.
More photos...
(I'm experimenting w/MySpace's photo galleries which I think are pretty cool ;)
For the past three years the girls have taken horseback riding classes for a few weeks each fall and/or spring. They LOVE trail riding and grooming the horses so they save up their money during the year (from birthdays and 4-H fair premiums) to pay for the lessons.
This fall their class are on Friday afternoons while I'm at the office. Fino serves as their taxi service and this past week I asked him to take a few photos of the girls on the horses for their scrapbook.
It's something I've done every year because like most parents, I enjoy looking back to see how the kids have grown.
Spring 2005
Fall 2005
But as I downloaded the photos this morning, I realized I didn't specify the kind of shots I wanted. I just assumed he would take a full body photo of the horse with the kid on it and that the kid might be looking in the direction of the camera for the photo.
As a woman who has been married for more than 14 years, I should have known better than to assume anything. I should have given him more instructions (although he tends to tune me out after the first sentence so that may not have worked anyhow).
While going through the photos I wondered why he didn't go to the places in the ring area where parents can see the riders without the obstructed view.
But then at the end of the 20 or so pictures he took (some of which were out of focus, bless his heart G. & L. use the same camera), I found a nice photo of the girls grooming a horse.
So this morning I asked him to take a few more photos next week after explaining more clearly what I wanted. He didn't see anything wrong with his photos but he agreed to try again.
Sometimes this blog thing gives me some nice leverage.
The girls and their Los Angeles area cousins have been spending a lot of time in the wooded area behind our house. There is a trail from our backyard that leads to a small stream and the girls dubbed the area the "Enchanted Forest."
They visit at least a couple of times a day to make up stories, cool off in the stream and climb around the logs.
But Fino does require the kids to carry a walkie-talkie whenever they go to "The E.L." (their new nickname for the forest), and it makes everyone happy. The kids have the E.L. to themselves and the parents can keep in regular contact to know they're safe (and it isn't far from the house anyway).
With the exception of the bugs (the kids have used nearly a full bottle of spray in two weeks), all the kids have loved the E.F. and will likely always remember playing with their cousins there.
G. insisted we pull over to the side of the street so she could hop out and take a couple of pictures of this beautiful dogwood tree in bloom in downtown Portland yesterday.
Spring in Maine is a beautiful time to stop and smell the roses (or dogwood).
This morning as we walked out our front door, we found a moose in our yard. I grabbed the camera after gawking for a minute but by then it was on the move again and crossing the street.
You would have thought we saw the Easter Bunny by how excited the girls were about the moose sighting (we've seen moose but never seen one in our own yard).
The kids and I were driving through Falmouth yesterday and spotted a deer grazing on someone's front yard shrubbery.
Another car had stopped to watch the deer so we pulled over too. Because nothing seemed to spook the deer for the few minutes we were there (other cars pulled over or slowed down to watch too), I decided to take a couple of pictures. The girls, in their best backseat driver-type way, said I needed to get out of the car for a better picture.
(G. she thinks just because she won a blue ribbon for her 4-H photography project, she's free to offer me advice now.)
But as it turned out, I did get a better picture when I got within 20 feet of the animal before she decided to take notice of me and run off.
"Good job Mommy," said L. when I returned to the car.
"Yeah, that's a really cool photo," G. told me after reviewing the digital images I had taken.
I'm so glad the kids were with me yesterday. I didn't realize how little I knew about taking pictures before they came along.
The kids and I were in traffic at an intersection in Windham the other day when we spotted at least 20 seagulls flying around the traffic lights in front of us. And as we pulled up to the light we saw several other gulls on the road weaving and dodging among the moving vehicles.
The reason: a pizza box.
The pink circle is the pizza box and although in this quick shot I took you can only see two seagulls, there were at least six on the road just a few seconds earlier.
Those gulls were really hot on the contents of that stray pizza box and did not appear to be concerned about the possibility of being hit by a car.
As I sat waiting for the light and watching the spectacle, I realized that there were a lot of seagulls in Windham and that surprised me. It really is a good distance away from the ocean.
The light eventually changed and as I made my turn, L. yelled from the backseat.
"Mommy, Mommy the pizza box flew open! And guess what?!?"
"What?" I asked and had to wait almost a minute for her and G. to stop giggling.
"There wasn't even any pizza in there. The box was empty!"
It was mighty windy and cold in Bridgton yesterday but the kids had a great time serving as bug detectives.
The girls are Juliette (independent) Girl Scouts this year and attended an outdoor workshop at Camp Pondicherry. We went out on a nature hike to look for insects and found lots of interesting stuff despite the cold temperatures.
One of the items we found in abundance were round, leaf-like balls. The girls couldn't resist cracking open the fragile balls to see what was inside, which was basically nothing. The leader, nor any of the other adults, knew exactly what we had found so if you do, post a comment. We'd really like to know!
The ball felt like a leaf and was paper-thin - L. cracked several by mistake when she squeezed too hard.
The group returned to the indoor classroom after our hike with a bunch of acorns the instructor had asked them to collect as well as a slug, worm and ant found by some of the other girls. The workshop leader asked the group to put their acorns in a glass of water and to discard the ones that sank to the bottom. The ones that floated were then cracked open to see if there was a weevil (insect) inside. Only 1 in the 18 acorns collected actually contained a weevil but the girls thoroughly enjoyed cracking open the nuts.
Neither L. or G. had acorns with a weevil but they vowed to search our rural backyard for acorns in hopes of finding one for themselves.
If you're interested in conducting your own experiment, which both my kids enthusiastically recommend everyone should try, check out these informative, easy-to-follow directions.
Yesterday's story about bird feeders offered some great tips about using backyard bird feeders. Although we have several bird houses (and bat boxes) in our backyard, we don't always maintain feeders during the winter. It seems the kids like the painting and decorating of the bird houses more than keeping feeders stocked with food every week.
We went for a quick hike this weekend to Sawyer Mountain and have plans to go back again when we have more time (more than an hour before dusk). On the next trip we plan to bring our Tree Club notebook to help us identify some deciduous trees (the ones with the falling leaves right now).
We all do pretty well identifying various evergreens but the deciduous trees are much harder to figure out. There are so many tiny details to remember in order to tell the differences among them.
The leaf that prompted us to return with our tree identifying notebook. We guessed it was from a maple tree but needed to consult the book at home to figure out it was a sugar maple leaf.
Do you have a trick to help identify certain types of leaves? We know the white pine tree one (5 needles = 5 letters in w-h-i-t-e). We'd love a few other tips to make it easier for us to remember if you have 'em.
My day at the office begins at 5 a.m. a few of days a week and since I live about 30 minutes away, I'm out of the house well before dawn.
I often see animals on the secondary roads I take into Portland but this morning it was like wildlife central. Luckily I avoided hitting anything (well, everything that wasn't already dead).
Mile 1: A possom scuttling across the road.
Mile 3: A dead skunk I smelled long before I actually saw it.
Mile 8: A slow moving racoon that crossed the road and required a quick stop to avoid hitting.
Mile 9: A deer that lept about 20 feet in front of my car before running into the woods.
Mile 13: Another freshly dead skunk with a potent aroma.
Mile 15: A racoon walking along the dirt shoulder.
My nerves were a little frayed by the time I got to work in my attempts to avoid killing anything or getting into an accident. The kids of course we disappointed they missed it all when I told them about it.
Have others see a lot of roadside wildlife lately? Must be the seasons changing.
The kids, especially G., has been asking for a while to see a seal pup release by the Marine Animal Lifeline. Yesterday we finally found a release time that fit into our crazy schedule.
Both girls enjoyed watching the seals swimming around once they were in the water and we asked one of the volunteers a few questions about them. She said they look really cute but they aren't so nice up close. They're wild animals and act accordingly (i.e., bite if you get too close).
There's some great photos of the pups as patients on the Lifeline's website that the kids love to look at. There is also a species identification page that gives lots of interesting details about the pinnipeds (another word for seals - a new vocabularly word for me :) in the Gulf of Maine.
G. caught all the action on the beach during the release -- and specified which pictures I should share.
The pups are transported in large dog carriers. There was a hooded seal that needed a lot of coaxing to leave his carrier yesterday.
The pups swam near the beach initially and the kids had fun trying to guess when - and where - they would pop their heads above the water.
Volunteers use large wood "shields" to re-direct any errant seals. Some were staying close to shore initially and needed some coaxing to swim out to sea.
L. can not leave any place we go without something. Note the new "seaweed collection" in her hand that she has decided to start.
The kids new favorite spot to read - the Clubhouse loft (phase 2 of Fino's shed project was completed last week).
The kids have spent every night this past weekend reading in the loft with Fino. Hey, whatever gets the kids excited about reading, I'm all for that. I guess location is everything...
G. and I were strolling along (not our usual hiking pace) on the Eastern Prom the other day looking for a good spot to sit and read our books while L. was taking a class.
I had packed some chips to snack on for G. along with a water bottle.
Chips on the Eastern Prom = not a good idea.
After a near miss with a poop bomb from one of many circling seagulls - how they found us so fast is beyond me - we packed up and headed to the library instead.
Then later, as G. was putting on her sandals at home, I heard her start to huff.
"Ooooh, I really hate poop! Mom, I have to wash my sandals, again."
Our yard is full of chicken poop because they do their business everywhere and the kids (and me) are constantly stepping in it. But Fino doesn't mind and tells the kids often to get over it.
"It makes the grass look great!" he tells us.
Yeah, thanks birds. We could however do with a little less fertilizer this week.
The kids trade postcards with other kids all over the world through Yahoo Groups. They love buying postcards and their favorite ones have puffins on them.
When they first started trading (more than a year ago), we did a little research to find some fun "facts" about Maine to write on the back of the postcards. We came across the Puffin Project and the kids learned a lot from that website (and the movie clips are a big hit with them). Needless to say, there are quite a few kids around the world who have learned a fact or two about Puffins because of my kids' fascination with the little birds.
So after I read today's story about the new Puffin Visitor Center in Rockland, I asked the girls if they'd like to check it out. Of course they'd rather see the birds in person but agreed with me that the center sounded fun.
"But someday we have to see a real Puffin," G. told me.
Well, there are puffin watch cruises that run through mid-August. I think this may be the summer we find time to make that trip.
These photos were another surprise when I downloaded my camera's memory card this morning. And as I sifted through the 20+ photos of this frog, I couldn't help but feel some sympathy for the little creature even though the girls' intentions were good.
Well, maybe the 5 feet to the ground isn't too far to jump.
Do I not deserve a little modesty girls? Please.
Hanging out in a shoe is not my idea of a good time girls. (And thanks Uncle Scott for those new shoes. The girls are obviously finding creative ways to enjoy them.)
"How long you been here?" asked the frog.
"Just grin and bear it, they'll let you go ... eventually," replied the blind cat.
I saw a beautiful sunrise on the way to the office this morning. I know I'm in the minority, but I'm so glad it's Monday.
It means that dance recital weekend is over.
Not that the girls and I don't enjoy recital, but it takes a lot of hours and work. And this year's costumes and props (from circus hat spinners and tightrope walkers to mermaids), were plentiful and hard to keep track of all weekend. I think our winter ski gear is actually easier to manage.
But now it's Monday and it doesn't matter if we can't find the mermaid hair bow, or the tightrope walker jump rope and parasol. And we don't have to worry about the quick change from one prop-filled number to the next backstage.
The mosquitos are out and biting with a vengence so we're looking for new bug repellent ideas because our old bottle of bug juice isn't cutting it this year. And with a new line of clothing that has bug repellent already in the material, I'm exploring our options right now.
But there is one insect L. does not want to repel - moths. She is fascinated with them and treats every one she can catch (and that would be lots because she's good at it) like loving pets. I'll never forget the night she watched an old Godzilla vs. Mothra movie with Fino and cried for an hour afterwards because Mothra died at the end.
Yeah, she really likes moths.
So the other night after some hunting around outside, she caught a new one and named her, "Pink Princess."
She made a bed of leaves and bark for Pink Princess before she went to bed. Of course the moth fluttered around the house all night and G. ended up closing their bedroom door to keep her out. G. does not feel the same affinity to moths that L. does.
So the next morning, after L. read Pink Princess a book, G. talked to her about how the moth's family might miss her if she stayed in the house all day. L. released her a little while later.
I think I need to take some lessons in psychology from G.
And if you know what kind of moth Pink Princess is, let me know.
We went to Mt. Apatite in Auburn yesterday to do some hiking and try our hand at crystal and mineral mining at a small quarry there. It turned out that we found plenty of other gems.
OK, what is this? It looked a lot like lettuce to me but I doubted that's what it was in the middle of the woods.
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