New Years Nature Walk
I took the kids to the Gilbert riparian preserve at Greenfield and Guadalupe today. It was fun, the trails are short enough that when they were tired we could go right back to the car. Our walk through the preserve ended up being about 1.6 miles. Not much but plenty for short little legs.
They enjoyed seeing some cranes, sandpipers, ducks, and for Charlotte, dogs. The other two don’t care for them much but Charlotte gets very excited to see dogs. She didn’t even notice the huge Canadian goose about 10 feet away from here because someone had a Schnauzer.
They also enjoyed the flowers and the cool seed pods that different plants produced; like the “star pods” they found.
By far their favorite part was the Dinosaur Dig in the area right next to the parking lot. Had I not gone mostly for the walk we would have just stayed right by the parking lot and they could have dug out the entire “dinosaur.”
The Birds and the … er Birds
This evening the kids and I were all outside enjoying the cool air and the peacefulness that outside brings to the baby. The two older girls were playing on the swing and the baby was watching the airplanes overhead. I noticed some birds on the fence, and pointed them out to our girls, who love birds. The baby started to cry, and the older kids started cooing and whistling trying to talk to the birds. I was surprised that the birds didn’t fly away. The girls had differing view of what they were doing. The birds were facing each other and the left one would move toward the right and the one on the right would move back. Then the one on the right would go left and it would move back, this repeated over and over and over (like 10 minutes of this) and they never flew away.
One of the girls thought they were playing tag, the other said they are mommy and daddy birds making a nest. All of a sudden they shot up into the air and started “hugging” as they fell towards the earth only to let go just in time to keep from smashing into the ground. Turns out the second one was mostly right.
It’s not everyday you see “National Geographic specials” in your own back yard. Not living in the suburbs, anyway.
Christmas
Besides the AWESOME gifts I got this year, I had a great time making a few gifts. Two of them were wooden logic puzzles. The first one, a ‘Soma Cube’, was discovered by Piet Hein in the mid 1930’s. There are exactly 240 unique arrangements of the seven pieces to form a cube. I made this puzzle out of aromatic cedar.
The second puzzle is the ‘Half-hour Puzzle’, created by puzzle-master Stewart Coffin. This puzzle is slightly harder than the Soma Cube with only 1 solution for the 6 pieces. I made this puzzle out of cocobolo.
I got the plans and instructions on how to make these from this book that Laurie gave me a few years ago for Christmas.
These turned out well, and I learned a few tricks to speed up the process. The best part is that the recipient of the first puzzle wasn’t able to put it down all day.
One of my Cute Girls
I love my medium format film camera… if I could just get it to feed properly.
Here is a great one… a little outdated, but a cute pic.
H’s Beach Picture
