Looking Back at a Wonderful Weekend…

Of course it started with the gorgeous weather we had last week, so Friday’s Spring Fever inspired lunch, along with Latin and Greek roots, on the back porch!  We love that about homeschooling!  Learning isn’t limited to the inside of a brick building and children don’t have to be clock watching or staring out the window when it’s a beautiful spring-like day!

Lunch on the porch!

Saturday, I worked on a newsletter project, while Ralph took his daughter to the AHG Father Daughter Sock Hop!  What a blast they had!  There was a classic car, old-fashioned penny candy brands that some of us remember, a bubble gum contest, a hula hoop contest, a yo-yo contest and 50′s dancing instruction!  Grace decorated her “locker” with markers and a photo of Ralph when he was 12!  Pretty funny!

Lunch was burgers/hot dogs and fries with 8 oz bottled Cokes (with straws!)  All the dad’s got together and sang “My Girl” to their daughters, and all the daughter’s sang “Lollipop, Lollipop” to the dads!  Each filled out a heart with all of the things that they love about each other!  It was a fun and fabulous time!  We are really enjoying this wonderful group of girls, and especially appreciate the hard work and truly loving and caring attitudes of the American Heritage Girl leaders! 

Sunday, we went to church.  Grace and I went back in the afternoon to ”work” on a mission project with the TGIF (Tween Girls in Faith) group at our church folding lots and lots and lots of “adorable“ baby clothes, “this is so cute!” onesies, “Look at this!” dresses, and ”Did Ian wear these?” jeans and overalls…that were left over from the GUMP (Ghent United Methodist Preschool) Consignment Sale.  The participating parents donated what ended up being 6 boxes full of adorable baby clothes to our local Crisis Pregnancy Center.  I was delighted our girls could help!

When Grace and I got home we found the weather was still beautiful, cooler but clear.  Ralph set a fire, and we relaxed on the back patio enjoying the sunset, the warmth of the fire, and delicious down time.  Grace made us a meatloaf for dinner!  We were excited to spot Mercury glimmering just above the horizon, and our now familiar friends Venus and Jupiter sparkling higher in the sky!  I took a picture, but it’s a little blurry.  Large object – moon, object to the left of moon, Jupiter, object farther below the moon, Venus.  We capped off the evening with sparklers that Papa Gene dropped off that were left over from a family reunion when I was preggers with Grace!  They all worked except one!

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Happy Wednesday!

Tossing a Salad!

Salad preparation isn’t particularly difficult, but it is sometimes the last thing I feel like doing on those nights when everything is running behind!  We tend to eat late because Ian doesn’t get home from Crew until 6:15 or so, and then “freshens up” a little.  So we might not sit down to dinner until 7 PM.  Our sort-of-hectic-schedule can also make proper meals a challenge with Boy Scouts and American Heritage Girls on Mondays, Church Choir on Wednesdays, and Ralph’s classes on Mondays and Thursdays! 

I’ve been delighted to have a helpful kitchen assistant ever since we took the time to go through all the steps to make a salad!  Plus I’ve caught my anti-vegan actually eating a few pieces of lettuce, and nibbling on the carrots now that she’s on the chopping and tossing side of the counter!  I’m thankful for the fun and do-able goals we’ve accomplished to earn the AHG Cooking Badge, and especially thankful for the prompting to partner up with my daughter in the kitchen!

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Guest Post: It’s for the birds…

Red-bellied Woodpecker in the Oak Tree

Project FeederWatch, created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is not only a great way to help scientists study bird populations, it’s a terrific way to share one of my favorite activities, bird watching, with my awesome homeschooled daughter and learn a bit more about the creatures that visit our little backyard corner of God’s Creation.  We studied birds extensively last year with Apologia Exploring Creation Zoology 1 Flying Creatures.  Project Feederwatch is a great way to keep that learning current in a fun way doing a little Citizen Science!

The process couldn’t be simpler: after signing up, choose two consecutive days to watch every week and record the MAXIMUM amount of each species seen at any one time. Count any birds that are drawn to the feeder, birdbath, flowers, fruit trees, etc. and send in the results by mail or online!

On our Wednesday and Thursday Counting Days, our most frequent visitors are a dozen-and-a-half house sparrows that flit back and forth to the feeder from the safety of some nearby English Ivy. They are joined at the seed and suet by small groups of Carolina chickadees, house finches, purple finches, Carolina wrens, European sparrows, blue jays, a beautiful red-bellied woodpecker, and an occasional northern cardinal or two. Beneath the feeder, a handful of mourning doves share the spilled sunflower and safflower seeds with a few white-throated sparrows. A Northern Mockingbird shows up every morning for a drink at the birdbath, and will grab a piece of orange from the feeding tray when I have a spare piece to put out.

While we have had cameo appearances by a downy woodpecker and a dark-eyed junco, the birds seem to have access to our counting schedule and enjoy saving the rarer birds for the days when we aren’t recording them! Tufted titmice, red-winged blackbirds, hairy woodpeckers, even a Cooper’s Hawk – they’ve all showed up with grins on their little beaks knowing full well we can’t brag about them unless it’s Wednesday or Thursday!

Feederwatch Booklet with lots of information and instructions!

The biggest avian insult came the TUESDAY (get it? Not our counting days!) after Christmas, when a flock of over 200 robins, flanked by over 100 sparrows and red-winged blackbirds descended on our backyard American Standard Holly.  It started the day weighed down with beautiful, juicy red berries and finished the afternoon stripped of all nutritional value.  By Wednesday, COUNTING DAY, all that was left of the robins was a sticky coating of purple holly poop on every flat surface in the backyard, and neighboring surrounds.

I haven’t seen a robin since.

Oh well, the happy chattering of the wrens lifts my spirits and reminds me all birds are welcome here whenever they choose to show. We’ll be watching!

Guest post by Ralph Garner! 

Visit our Pinterest Board for Garner Project Feederwatch Bird Sitings!  We have pinned images from Cornell site www.allaboutbirds.org/guide since it’s difficult to get good photos that show the markings, beaks etc really well. 

Get in on the act!  Today begins a 4 day bird count that might be easier for some than the 6 month long feeder watch.  Visit the Cornell Lab site for more details!  Fun and easy!  Project Feederwatch website is www.feederwatch.org  the Great Backyard Birdcount is www.birdsource.org/gbbc

Onions only on half…

We are a pizza eating family!  You would think that we would get tired of it, but we never seem to.   Frozen, delivery, California Pizza Kitchen, Y Not, Primo,or Bella, you name it, we love it – always with onions only on half!

Ralph used to make pizza dough in the bread machine on weekends when the kids were little, somehow we got away from that.  Probably because of South Beach…(sigh).  In any case, we were delighted with the requirement to make homemade pizza dough for Grace’s AHG Cooking Badge!  Feeling certain that using the bread machine would be cheating, we picked up Fleishman’s Yeast ‘specially for Pizza Crust and followed the recipe on the package using white wheat flour from King Arthur.  Ralph, who has more experience with homemade pizza, took the lead on this one!  To make things super easy we used pre-shredded cheese, a jar of sauce, pre-sliced pepperoni and a large can of sliced olives.  My kids love olives, and whatever doesn’t make it on to the pizza they snack on.  I chopped the onions to save time.  The whole wheat crust was pretty good, next time we will try adding some garlic to the crust for a little extra punch.   We really enjoyed making pizza together!  It was tasty, relatively economical and no big deal to fix it with onions only on half!

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