Lake Exploring and Baby Duck Rescuing

One of these past days Joe and I had to tagteam the kiddos again because of Dr. appointments.  We met up this time at a lake right near the docs. Luckily, everyone had brought their adventure bags with them.  Even luckier, Squid came along to participate in the adventuring.

So, it was a little stinky today around the lake, must have been all those dead fish that we just had to look at over and over again.

The littlest explorer eagerly headed out to see what was going on.

We trotted around on the rocks and found some totally awesome ants:

A little further and we found an adorable family of ducks on the rocks (kinda sounds like a drink name - doesn't it?).

Well, those little ducks were quite happy on the rocks.  Then they saw us headed their way (us being two very excited boys squealing their heads off in delight of seeing the ducks) and hurriedly jumped into the lake.  Except two little duckings got stuck in the rocks.  Poor little ducklings.  I wanted to sing "there's an animal in trouble," but I think the Wonder Pets take the summers off.  I crawled down into the rocks and silently prayed I didn't slip into the lake during the rescue effort; it did smell bad and there were all those dead fish around after all.  With some effort and cheering from the adventurers, I was able to catch the little ducklings and plop them back into the water.

They hurriedly swam back to their mama duck, who had been yelling at me the whole time about getting near her babies.  Sorry Mama Duck, we were just trying to help!  We will have to write to the Wonder Pets and let them know we did some baby duck rescuing that morning.  I am sure they would be very proud.

Early Morning Bike Ride

Sometimes the kids tag along with me on the early morning bike ride.  This time Manatee tagged along with me as well.

Not sure which one is cuter.

Take a closer look at that Manatee there - notice anything odd?

Hmmm, yup, why does Manatee have underwear on his head one might wonder.  And wonder I did, in fact, I wondered out loud to my son who was the caretaker of said Manatee.  Smoosh was absolutely astonished that I would even say that.  "Mommy, that's not underwear, that's Manatee's helmet!!!" he said in shocked amazement at my clear inability to recognize safety equipment when I saw it.  Well, keeping with his concern for Manatee, we made sure he was completely safe and ready for the ride.

I can only hope that any of my neighbors that saw a Manatee with under...uhh...a helmet on his head and buckled into my bike seat knew that 1. We were just being safe or 2. We're all crazy over here, Manatees included.

Some Pics from Kentucky

Where good livin' is going to lead to lots of good memories....

Lovin' some baby cousins and secretly planning with Mommy on ways to steal her home with us.

Maybe this baby cousin would fit in our car with us and Aunt Kake and Uncle Sean would never know....

Finding "baby stingrays" in puddles, which actually turned out to be tadpoles.

Lookin' at tadpoles and listening to Aunt T bore us about frog embryos....

I've never seen an explorer look so stylin'.

I think this is about all the pics I took while we were there; I think I was much too busy having a good time :)

Cherry Picking

My awesome father-in-law bought me a cherry tree and a plum tree a few years back.  When we went to the nursery together to get them, I loved hearing the stories about him and his siblings climbing up the plum tree and collecting all the fruit.  He told me about the cherry tree we were going to get and how the cherries were good for pies and jams.  We got home and right away he set about to getting my two new trees planted, dragging Joe on over from what he was doing to get planting with him right away.  I stood by and could just see my kids climbing on the branches of the plum tree a few years ahead.

The blooms the first year were incredible on both trees, but no fruit.  I sadly watched that first summer as the Japanese Beetles made minced meat of the plum tree leaves.  I eagerly waited the next spring to see if it was permanent damage, but thankfully, no it was not.  There was a beautiful show of blossoms again on both trees!  Then, even more incredible, we saw cherries coming in on the cherry tree!  My mind started racing with the cherry jam and cherry pies I would make.  Cherry cobbler, cherries on ice cream, cherry soda....I could just taste them all from looking at those unripe little white berries.  We went off for a week vacation and came home to discover the cherry tree void of any berries..white or red....gone...all of them....stinkin' birds.  They left us the pits still attached to the stems...super stinkin' birds.

This year, I got a little smarter.  I actually decided we would get a bird net for the tree. With the help of the JackRabbit next door and Smoosh, we headed out to the garden center and made our purchase.  Of course it took the Big Daddy to actually get the net on the tree, but at least now the cherries were protected.  As seems typical this time of year, we had a getaway scheduled and left our little cherry tree with its net on.  There were definitely little white berries waiting to ripen on the branches.  We got back to find CHERRIES!!  Bright, red, edible CHERRIES!!!  Oh those jams, pies, and cobblers to be made!  I might even have to throw a few extra in pancakes or on top of waffles!


With the older kids off at various summer activities, JackRabbit, Smoosh, Squeaks and I set out to do some cherry picking:

Its still a small tree, so they could all reach and pick just fine!

Playing peek-a-boo was a good diversion after she grew tired of her cherry picking....all full 30 seconds of it.

Happy cherry pickin' crew.

Please note from that last pic the bowl of cherries.  There it was...our full bounty.  A bit dismayed, I started erasing the visions of cherry jam and pie and whatnots from my cherry daydream.  Hmmmm...barely a bowl full of cherries.  Nonetheless, they were our cherries and we had waited a few years for our harvest and they were from the tree that my FIL bought AND planted for me, so for those reasons alone, they were extra special cherries and something wonderful was going to happen to them.  And something wonderful did happen to them....Otter.  He and I spent the afternoon pitting the cherries and he found a recipe to make cherry cobbler with.  He then proceeded to make the cobbler entirely by himself.

Messy cherry pitting process.

Yum...cherry cobbler.

We all enjoyed talking about our cherry picking and cobbler making that night at dinner.  We enjoyed that cobbler down to the last bite and talked about all the cherry goodies we were going to make next year.  We have the net ready and will be doing  a cherry dance for a bit more of a bountiful harvest.  And who knows...maybe we will even get a few plums as well!

Mushroom Hunter

I love the random books I find in the library's new books section.  One of my favorite picks this summer was this guy:

Yummm...deliciousness!  It describes all kinds of mushrooms and where to find them (hence Mushroom Hunter...).  Even luckier was that we had some pretty rainy weather during one of the weeks that produced....you guessed it....lots of mushrooms!!  Eagerly, I headed out to try and identify some of the mushrooms, but little did I know that I had a great mushroom hunter with me....the Beans!!  She immediately fell in love with grabbing mushrooms, identifying them using the book, and then making spore prints out of the mushroom caps.

Taking the cap off...

..protecting for over night spore release...

..and TA DA!! a few spore prints!!

Not only did Beans fall in love with mushroom hunting and spore printing, she became downright obsessive about the whole venture!

Beans on Wednesday (note the increase in mushroom caps...)

And again on Friday....obsess much?!?!?

The most exciting part of our mushroom hunting adventure was when Squeaks decided to pop an unknown mushroom into her little piehole.  Of course, this mushroom had to be one that, try as we might, we just could not find in The Mushroom Hunter.  A quick call to Poison Control (apparently one of several they had that week for the same reason) left us knowing that severe vomiting, hallucinations, and sweating would occur if this indeed turned out to be poisonous...all we had to do was wait.  So we did.  And there was no severe vomiting, hallucinations, or sweating.  We did manage to take a picture of the mushroom she ate just in case we'd have to bring them to the authorities later:

Now that we know what they look like and that they are not poisonous, I'd say its time to grab some more and start using them to cook with, that is if we can keep them away from Beans trying to take their caps off and make more spore prints with them!!!

Smoosh's Last Day of School

Ok, so it was awhile ago....but I'm catching up with lost time:)  Here's the big man's last day of 4K!
 

Just as excited on the last day as he was the first....I bet the teachers were even more excited it was his last day:)

Ohhh we are all just so happy!

Squeaks got a special seat with her brother with all the kiddos.

Seriously - wasn't that adorable? 

Rockin' her kicks....

Maybe when she gets older she will not like the hand-me-downs from her brothers quite as much, but right now, this little lady knows how rock her kicks just fine......