Living Next to a Nature Preserve

Aside from the tiny bedrooms, I love the house we currently live in.  One of the reasons is that we're next door to a small nature preserve.  On our side of the nature preserve, there is a very short trail that our neighbor maintains. Josh, Maddie, and I like to go walking on the trail nearly every day.  While I don't do "nature study" formally, we're kind of getting it anyway.   I take my camera along and capture some great little details on a regular basis.

I caught this great photo of an ant crawling on a leaf.

There are two large ant hills near the trail.  They are very busy now that it is spring.

This is the view of a lake at one point on the trail.

I have no idea what this is but they are beautiful.  They bloomed later than other flowers I've found in the preserve.

I found these mushrooms inside a rotting stag.

This tiny wild roses are adorable.

When I explained that the ivy would eventually take over and kill the trees, he became concerned.  He now tries to pull off a few ivy leaves on each visit.  There is a group that is working on ivy removal in a different part of the preserve.  Hopefully, they'll move over to this area too.  I'm planning on buying some good gloves and getting the older kids involved in helping out.

These were on a different trail but I just loved the clumps of mushrooms along it.

The trout lillies have already come and gone.

We found trilliums in three different colors.  I had only seen white before so it was a nice surprise.  I love purple.

We've found several slugs.  This one is by far the most handsome of them all. We found him just today.

Several times now, I've seen flocks of tree sparrows skimming the water's surface.  It's really neat to watch.

I took my littles for a walk and found nine ducklings and mama sitting on the log.  Mama saw us and called her babies away.

I just love close up photos...even ones of a fly on a leaf.  I love the detail!

The other day I didn't have my camera, but a bald eagle swooped just over the tree line and over the water just as we were at the water's edge to see him.  It was fantastic.

I love living here.  

Tadpoles

We were suppose to raise tadpoles last year.  It was a suggestion in our science text, so we went out to the local pond and collected some eggs.  They never hatched.  Now we think we had salamander eggs.  Apparently, they are hard to hatch and look like frog eggs.  There WERE salamanders in the pond too.

This year, thanks to the generosity of another homeschool family, we have three tadpoles to raise.  They are hanging out in a 10 gallon fish tank on my kitchen counter.  The kids have been enjoying them so far.

We've been refreshing their water with lake water which contains food for them too.  It couldn't be easier.

They hatched about a week and a half ago and are just a tad over half an inch long.  We think they are Pacific Tree Frogs, which are abundant around here.

We've always enjoyed all of the critters we've raised, whether they are our pets or just temporary guests. I highly recommend raising critters with kids.  So far we've had:

cats (we have three currently)
dogs  (we currently have one)
goldfish  (Mika has three)
painted lady caterpillars
ants
triops (they are cool!)
slugs
pill bugs
tadpoles
and soon we are expecting praying mantises

The Best Day

Sunday, May 6th, turned out to be one of the best days ever.  It was just truly such a nice day.

I woke up and went straight to the shower.  This got us off to a good start.  I was dressed and ready for church and had plenty of time to cook and eat breakfast before church.  There was no rushing around before church.

At church, we started a new series called Forty Days in the Word.  I found myself rather interested in this one, so we finally got around to joining a small group as that study involves Sunday services, small group study, weekly memory verses, and daily devotionals.  Pastor's message went over the reliability of the Bible, and I found myself in awe of some of the history and probability statistics surrounding the Bible.  It was a great sermon.  I really enjoyed it.  (Someone brought the freshest, yummiest donuts to church, too.  I had a half of a chocolate-iced, raised donut with coconut.  Yum!)

After church, I had a brief conversation with our pastor.  This is a testament to how awesome our church is.  I've always had a thing about church authority and avoided talking to pastors.

Then we headed off to a quick stop at Safeway for our contribution to the small group snack/meal.  (We didn't know ahead of time what was needed so I couldn't prepare something at home.)  We got there, and the kids headed off to visit with their friends while Scott and I chatted with the adults.  We had a great lunch and enjoyed the company.  Then we called our two oldest kids down to watch the video with us.  We released the kids after for more play while the adults discussed the questions in the workbook.  It was a good discussion, and I felt fairly comfortable there.

At the end of the our small group time, Sam was invited to his friend's house.  This was especially exciting to me.  Sam hasn't had the best luck at finding good friends and getting invites.  I didn't even have to think before saying yes.  So he went off with them while the rest of us went home.

At home, Scott and Maddie had a nice little nap.  Josh enjoyed the sprinklers and hose out front.  This was another exciting moment because just over a year ago, I would have never allowed one of my kids his age outside without adult supervision.  It was just too unsafe.  So, they'd either get stuck indoors until I was ready to sit out there and watch them, or I'd have to sit outside bored watching them play.  Here, he can head outside and play while I can do my own thing.  Mika and I did our own thing.  It was a nice quiet afternoon.

Finally, we piled into the car to go pick up Sam.  His friend lives 50 minutes away (we knew that before saying yes) on a "farm".  We were all excited to see their new pig, which had wandered onto their property recently.  They have no idea where he belongs, just that he spent the previous week at a neighbor's property.  Well, when we got there, we found a paradise.  Land covered in lush, green grass, some trees, a river next to their property, very friendly chickens, a cute pig, etc.  We got a tour of their very clean barn and shop.  They have an air hockey table, and Scott and I got to play a game.  (We used to play on dates before marriage.)  The kids, and Scott, played with their air soft guns and stomp rocket.  The kids all held and petted the chickens.  I expected to stay about 30 minutes...enough time to pick up Sam and take a quick look at the pig...but we were there two hours.

This chicken was very friendly.  If you were patient, it would come up to you on its own accord.

On the way home, we saw lots of cows (lots of calves), horses, a herd of llamas, and a flock of sheep.  We stopped for milk shakes on the way home too.

We got home just before 9:30pm.  We threw on some warmer shirts/jackets and headed out with the telescope.  We knocked on our neighbor's door, because we had invited him to view with us earlier.  Then we viewed Mizar and Alcor (the bend in the Big Dipper's handle is two stars), Venus (22% illuminated), Mars, Arcturus (a -0.05 magnitude star in the constellation Bootes), and Saturn.   It's cool that we can see Venus's cycles.  Saturn was the big wow of the night.  We were even able to make out two moons.  One would obviously be Titan.  The other was very faint, but it's positioning made it obvious it was a moon. So even though we are in the middle of the city, and three of our neighbors have very bright outdoor lights, we were still able to see some exciting things.

We finally headed back inside about 11:00pm and sent the kids off to bed.  It was a great day.