Snow Day!

This was our backyard Saturday morning:
There's sleet and ice under about 4 inches of snow.
Cool designs on the chain-link fence, huh?
Frosty the snowman
Honey eating snow/sleet:
Draft horse pulling Princess & Speedy on our sled (aka gator teeter-totter):
Building a fort:
Princess making snowballs.
It was so cute, she'd make a couple, stack them by the bottom of the fort. Hubby kept 'inadvertently' hitting her in the head with snowballs and making her cry. (Like he'd aim for her feet, then she'd bend down. Or he'd lob one over the fort, and she'd stand up into it. He seemed most proud of the time he knocked her hat off with a snowball.)

Metamorphosis...Finally! **updated!

It's been a busy day. Our basement was leaking last night--it seeped in quite a bit. That gets a big ARRGH! :) Hubby estimated we've had a foot of rain. Not sure how accurate that is. We're hoping our polliwogs didn't get overflowed out of the fishpond! But, our pool in the back is full of tadpoles, as well, so there will be more to watch hopefully. The pool is as full as it's ever been. Anyway, Hubby thinks the basement leaked because the gutters were plugged with maple helicopters. ARRGH. We're drying things out.




In better news, one of our cocoons saw some action today! We thought maybe they were dead--they've been cocooned in a jar since September. We didn't get to see our Luna Moth emerging, but I looked out this afternoon and saw some big green wings in our jar, so of course we all ran out to see. It has crawled a stick out of the jar and seems to be letting its wings dry and such.


The moth came out of the brown, webby looking thing toward the bottom of the jar. In the pic below, you can kind of see the hole it came out of, below and between its wings. We're going to have a closer look at that cocoon once the moth is out of the way!

Princess drew me a butterfly picture afterward. :)
**I searched online and found out that Luna Moths don't have mouths! They don't eat--only live for a week to mate, then die. Very interesting. Ours was hanging out outside the screened-in porch for a couple days, then was gone.

Bee-youtiful

While at my parents' for Mother's Day, the kids got a bee lesson. Here they're looking at bees collecting pollen on the dandelions.
Close up. :)
Here's where the busy bees are flying back to their swarm inside the wall of a barn.
Here's one of the busy bees returning with golden pollen sacs full.
I think that having watched 'Bee Movie' this winter helped the kids know what they were seeing a little bit more. :)

More random

I only have random things to write anymore, it seems. :) Sorry for the lack of posts--I guess it's the weather--I just don't stay inside or in front of the computer that much anymore I guess. We're sure enjoying our screened porch out back. Here are the girls coloring together (or sucking on colored pencils together, not sure which.) :)

And Princess & Speedy painting on the porch this afternoon. Speedy & his cousin also had haircuts on the porch this week, and we ate supper out there a couple times. I'm glad my hubby is so easy to please--little things like eating on the porch really make his day. (Which I'm sure helps make up for the lousy new Mexican Rice recipe I tried.)

Here's my 'cheese!er' I was trying to get a pic of her putting necklaces on herself, and as usual she came running toward me. Pretty cute, anyway.
If you don't regularly look at my other blog, or get our weekly emails, you may enjoy this post from today.

Spring Stuff (but not cleaning!) :)

Pictures from a windy visit to the park last week with my sister. I love the one of Honey's hair blowing! I didn't know she had so much hair! And underdogs--the kids can't get enough of them!

We had fun watching the ducks and geese, too. Especially talking about the mommy and daddy mallard pairs. The kids weren't really interested in reading 'Make Way for Ducklings' when we got home, though. :)

I was trying to catch a duck in action, ducking down for a snack. I was kind of far away, but caught this one!

CHEEEEEEESE!

I don't know how the girl picked up on this so fast--all I have to do now is get out the camera...

We were playing outside yesterday, and heard some pretty chirping. Thanks to the lack of leaves, we were actually able to locate the singer WAY up at the top of our oak tree!

For anyone following our swimming pool foibles: I think we've decided not to do anything with it right now. The estimate was $7,800, and that was with Hubby doing about half of the labor.

Nothing really interesting to say today--just wanted to make sure I got a post in for the week! And procrastinating--I think I really need to mop the kitchen floor--apparent by the ant trail that's found something or other. I can't imagine how anything sweet or sticky could get on my floor! Speaking of sweet, here's a link to the best-ever brownies if you don't have any yet! We don't do the nuts; and I've used parchment paper instead of the foil for lining the pan--works great!