Another bird ID

These are some bird pics from the spring.  I had a lot of traffic here for a couple weeks when the cedar tree berries were just right.

This is some kind of woodpecker, right?


Him and his wife...

This might be a different bird.  They would hand upside down and get the berries at the ends of the branches.  

I loved this little guy.  Doesn't he look so fluffed up and cold?

He's noticed me.  Not amused by the attention I guess. 

Is this how a bird moons someone?

So lets see who ID's the woodpecker first.....my mom or my nephew.  On your mark, get set, go!

Last day of school

Ugh, none of my test printed. Trying again.

The last day of school (half day, actually) was one big party.  The teacher didn't even bother with desks.

Hanging with friends.  Parker's made a lot of new friends this year.



They did a little craft - glued their picture to construction paper and then collected each other's signatures.

Mazes and hidden pictures

Then they all lined the hallways for the 5th grade "walk".  It's a cute tradition:  the 5th graders all line up and do one final walk through the halls.  All the other grades have noisemakers (waterbottles filled with gravel) and construction paper flags and they cheer and give them high 5's.  Very chaotic and loud but they love it.

 

Finished eggs

 

Did I ever post Easter egg pics?

 

Follower flies free

Follower emerged!

Talent show video

It sounds like my video works.  This is Parker's first talent show appearance. She and her friends did all the choreography themselves and set up practices, conned one of the moms into taking them shopping for outfits, got their permission slips signed, etc etc.  They performed it for the K-2nd graders yesterday.  Pretty cute I think.

Chrysalises

  Follower

Leader.   

The black dots are "frass", a way to say caterpillar poop that doesn't make 2nd grader giggle. 

New temporary pets

In second grade at Parker's school, they do a long project where they learn the life cycle of caterpillars and butterflies.  They get caterpillars and watch them turn into butterflies, they collect milkweed and hatch (?) some monarch caterpillars which then turn into butterflies, they visit a butterfly festival, and they sell milkweed seeds in decorated biodegradable pots to raise money for Save the Monarchs or somesuch.  

In my garden I bought and planted some dill....I don't really use dill but I read that it keeps the cucumbers company.  Parker found a couple caterpillars chowing down on my dill plants and captured them.  I'm not sure how a caterpillar/butterfly finds a tiny dill plant in the overplanted jungle that is my garden, but they did.  

 These are terrible pets in that they will only eat fresh organic herbs, but they are great pets because they eventually leave home.  Hopefully in grand fashion after they've become a Swallowtail butterfly.

There are 2 of them. One day, one of them basically doubled in size.  Parker named him Leader, and the smaller one Follower.  We've all enjoyed watching them mill around and chow on herbs.  One morning Parker was looking and looking and looking and finally said: "I can only find one."  That was sort of worrisome to think he might be loose in the house somewhere, possibly hiding in my shoe. I looked and looked too, and finally found the missing guy at the very top wedged between the lid and the side.  Bob later reported the one of them had been unusually active that morning, circling the top, circling the bottom.   Apparently he was looking for a spot to start his chrysalis.  ~NOT~ a cocoon, those are for moths I've learned.

Parker inspected him and realized it was the small guy, "IT'S FOLLOWER!"  We were all surprised...my money was on Leader to be the first to change.    Here's how he looked for about a day.  The next day his outer skin molted off - Parker showed me this by saying "see that thing down there that looks like his head fell off?  It didn't really, that's just molted skin.".  Luckily she told me that before breakfast or there might have been more than molted caterpillar skin on the floor.  

 

 Now he looks sort of like a leaf.  Leader made his chrysalis too, but his was lower down and it's green.  It will be interesting to see if they are a different type of butterfly, or if Leader somehow made his  chrysalis green for camouflage reasons.  I'll try to get some pics that taken and posted.

Outtage

I'm trying to get some pictures posted.  Bear with me, this time of year is totally insane!
Here's Parker's recent lost tooth.  It hung on for days and days and days and finally one morning it was hanging out and wouldn't go back, Parker was crying because it hurt no matter what she did.  So we both got our nerve up and she let me yank on it.  I was prepared to use all my might....we were running late, there was no time for tooth drama!  It came out so easily that she didn't even feel it!  She gave me such a look of "you are so useless" because she thought my fingers slipped.  The new tooth is already peaking through.

I made the headband she's wearing too. 

Riding out storm...

Update:  All is well.  We just got heavy rain, luckily.  Parker has taken full advantage of my distraction, eating junk food and watching youtube videos.

 

 

St Patrick's Day

What did you do before your 2nd cup of coffee yesterday?  I made a leprechaun hat for a stuffed animal. Parker has a Webkinz named Clover she got last year around this time, and she's been counting the days down to St. Patrick's day so she could dress him up and cart him around.   

And then she taped together a bunch of garbage to make him a house.  This house features a giant refrigerator, a card game and a hat holder.

 

Inside the fridge.  Lots of sweets.

St. Patty's outfit:  greens and blues. 

 

Ruby Red Lips

This is what woke me up this morning. A bossy chatty hand puppet that eats inanimate objects.

Sock hop pic

Dinner for Squinkies

Here's a "what Parker's into these days" post.  She loves her Squinkies.  They are these tiny little plastic animals and I really don't get what's so interesting about them, but they're very popular.  I'm pretty sure the markup on them is 10,000% and someone out there is laughing all the way to the bank.

Anyway, this should give you some idea of the size.

And this is what she does with them:  sets them up in these little vignettes all over the place. They take a lot of time to set up, and then NO ONE IS TO MOVE THEM.   Here they are at a restaurant.  I helped her make the tiny menus on the computer and she cut them all out.  The stuffed giraffe wearing the Post-it hat is the chef.  The little girl Squinkies in the front are the waitresses.  The Diet Coke can is there for scale.

              

Bird ID

What kind of bird is this? They've discovered the finch feeder recently. It seems very un-natural for them to perch on it....they've had to practice quite a bit to get used to it. From what I can tell, they're eating the niger seeds. I mixed in sunflower chips with the niger because I didn't think I'd have enough finches for a whole feeder's worth.  Oh, and the wind is blowing some of his feathers outward.....they're usually smooth.

Rest of the cookie pictures

Here are the rest of the pictures I promised.  If I don't post them now, I never will.  

It's times like this that I regret letting Parker wear a shirt that is too small, inside out, all day long and not brush her hair.  Oh well.

Cutting out cookies

A leftover ball of dough scraps that she played with off and on throughout the day.

Decorating the very special longhorn cookies for Bob.  He likes red hots on his Christmas cookies, so Parker was in charge of those.

I finally let her eat one.

Close up of the decorations.  I do the icing (my signature squiggle style), and Parker does the sprinkles.  You can't really tell but they have sparkly sugar on top in addition to the few bits of colored sprinkles that I allow.

Christmas eve in the kitchen

How to you fill the looooong day before Christmas?  Cooking and eating worked pretty well for me.  I started early this morning making cookie dough, then Parker and I cut them out and baked them.  She made it nearly all the say to the end before getting bored.  I have pictures of her helping...I'll put those in a different post.

After we iced cookies, it was time for a special fancy Christmas eve appetizer I've never tried to make before.  Shrimp Dumplings!  I had shrimp in the freezer, and the other ingredients on hand, so if these never got made, I was only out a couple bucks for the wonton wrappers.  They were great - just like at a restaurant.

Next it was time for pizza.  (I bought frozen dough). Parker had canadian bacon and onion and we had canadian bacon, onion, mushroom and pineapple mango salsa.

And now I'm going to SIT DOWN for the rest of the evening and help Parker track santa on the NORAD site.  

Christmas eve cookies

Parker is literally skipping in circles with excitement.