A fun project!

Since yesterday we did the fruit tasting, I figured I would do these bird feeders that I saw on another blog. I just loved the idea of this feeder so here you have it. I did two though. I made one with the pummelo and with the ugli fruit. Just in case you are wondering, the name of that orange looking fruit is called UGLI and it looks ugly too.
These are wonderful projects and I am hoping to see more birds. The receipe is 1lb. lard and 2cups peanut butter. Melt. Take off heat and add 4 cups bird seed and 2 cups cracked wheat(I put cracked corn).

I didn't find fresh cranberries so I got the frozen kind and left the bag in the fridge till morning. Then I got yarn and then got those cranberries on there. That's it. You just put it outside and wait.

I really don't know what is wrong with my backyard though. It's been almost 2 weeks since any birds have come by. My feeders are full and they still haven't come by. Now I am hoping that with these two colorful and wonderful smelling feeders they will come.

So let's see what I attract now. Can't wait. They look beautiful anyway.

Taste testing

This morning was a bit different than most in that we had taste testing fun. I saw this on someones blog and wanted to try this for a while but never got around to it. Today was the day though.

I went to the grocery store and got one of every fruit there that we always pass by and wonder what they taste like but never get because we don't know. You know what I mean. You've done it too. You see that strange looking thing and pick it up, maybe smell it, touch it, squeeze it and then put it back down. No I haven't been around the corner looking at you at the grocery store but I know everyone does it, right? hehehe

Our fruits today were: a Korean pear, red pear, red banana, star fruit, pomegranate, red pummelo, ugli fruit, and tamarind.

Red Pummelo: 3 out of 4 thumbs up, like a grapefruit but sweeter, didn't have that after taste of the grapefruit

Korean Pear: 3 thumbs up, crunchy like a pear but had a unique flavor

Red Pear: 4 thumbs up, very sweet and juicy

Pomegranate: 4 thumbs up, sweet unless you put your mouth on the rest of the non edible insides.

Star fruit: 2 thumbs up, crunchy, was just ok

Red banana: 3 thumbs up, sweet

Ugli fruit: 4 thumbs up, tasted like a sour orange

Tamarind: 2 thumbs up, if you like sour try this

I love this banana!

Pomegranates rule!

Yum, sour Tamarind.

We had fun doing this and we also have some plans for a little extra to go along with our fruity day. Check back later to see our next project.

Nature Picture Quiz

Here it is....I have seen this bird outside several times. He is wonderful looking. Look at his mask. Kind of reminds me of Zorro. Please take a guess if you want to play the game and leave it in a comment. Make it a family project to figure out what this bird is. Perhaps challenge your children to figure out what it is. Hand them ID books and see what they come up with. Remind them about the mask being all black. Look at the colors, eyes, and beak. Guide them but also give them a chance to figure it out. It's fun and addicting.

As always come back this weekend and see the update on this blog for the answer. Have fun figuring this out.

UPDATE: Yes, it's a Loggerhead Shrike. You can go here to learn more. Thanks for playing along.

Rain, rain go away....

We had thick rain clouds in the sky yesterday. I went out with the boys to put up another bird feeder and my littlest loves to look at the clouds and see shapes in them. Yesterday the clouds were moving very fast and he made a comment on that. So I took a picture and will put it in their school scrapbook.
Things are beginning to bloom and flower. Not much cold weather down in these parts. I saw this cactus I have that fell over on its side and is now blooming. I can't wait to take pictures as it come to a full bloom.
Shrubs are starting to grow too. We hardly had a winter this year. Sorry, to those of you in knee high snow. Although my boys would love to spend some time in the snow.
Everything is coming to life. Even spiders! EEWWWW! Can you see that pear shaped egg sack. I wonder how many spiders that is holding? Anyone want to come for the egg hatching party. hehehehe
Most of my pictures are taken right outside my door. It seems like if you look hard enough you will find something new every week.

Lapbooking...

We are done with our Marco Polo lapbook. We covered the whole thing with construction paper and glued pictures on the front and the boys were so excited to be done. You can read more about our lapbook here.

Lunch Time

On the way home from our Sunday meeting and a funeral talk, I saw something and made hubby back up for a picture. It was a Red-Tailed Hawk. It was on a private driveway eating something. When we backed up it flew with its food in its beak. We drove as close as we could get to it without making it go away again and got a few shots. Now I still don't have my zoom lens so I had to zoom in on the computer and it's not as clear as I would like it but you can see what he has.
You can see a little of the red from the tail and something else in the tree.
Yes, it had a snake. It flew away shortly after this but what a neat find. The boys thought it was "soooo" cool.

Nature Picture Quiz

This is the second bird I took while visiting my friend in California and while visiting Yosemite. Some of you will have to look it up and that is the whole purpose of this. I know I had to do it. So take your guess and leave a comment. Come back here to see the answer.

Scroll down for new posts.

Update: Yes, again!! You girls are so on top of things. This is a Black headed Grosbeak.

Friday Fun and Not So Fun Friday

I thought I would start this off on a good and nice note. You'll see why later on. We got up early and my little one did school in pajamas. He loves his Thomas the Train pj's. We had planned on finishing up our lapbook but due to a doctors appt we stopped early and didn't finish but doesn't he look happy for being so early in the morning? I've got such smiley boys. Now before you scroll down let me warn some of you. The next two pictures are of what my hand looks like now after my appt with the doctor.
I had a thorn stuck in me for over a month and it wouldn't come out no matter what I tried. It was a bump that hurt every time I accidentally bumped my hand on something. So I figured enough was enough. I went to get it taken out. The doctor asked me to lay down and I asked if I could sit and watch. He looked at me and asked if I would faint. He asked me several times. Each time I told him that I wanted to watch and if I had brought I video camera I would have taped it. So I got 3 pokes with a needle to numb my finger. Then he started with the very sharp knife. It was amazing to see my finger getting cut and not feel it. Blood doesn't bother me and it's a good thing too. He eventually found the piece of thorn that was further down my finger than he thought. He had to cut deeper and deeper till it popped out. We all cheered. hehehe Ok, has anyone passed out on this story yet?

So there you have my story for today. I got 3 stitches and each was done differently. He was also teaching his new nurse so he was showing her the different ways to do this. I did ask him if I could cut a bit and to do a stitch but he didn't let me. aahhh man! Now my finger is swollen. I can't bend it too much because the nylon thread pulls. That is not a fun feeling.

Now are you wondering where I got that thorn? Picking lemons and oranges. It was worth it though. After all I got to see a dissection, live!

Tea Time Tuesday on Thursday

Yes, we did it this week. I love spiced chai tea and my two youngest love having tea time. The oldest is not fond of hot tea. I got my own mug not a cup, hehe, I love my tea more. My mom was here and I called her to come for hot tea too. She sat in my reading of our daily scripture reading and of Kate and the Beanstalk. We also read While You Were Sleeping, Madeline and a few pages of Treasury of Children's Poetry.
Now I am adding another picture that I think it so funny. My youngest has been begging for a dog. Almost everyday he asks me for a little dog. We can't have cats because of the kids allergies plus I'm really not a cat person. I would prefer a small dog but hubby is (so far) totally against a dog. My youngest has been working on changing his mind so today for writing I asked him to just write some words but he wants to write a sentence. Can you see those big eyes asking for a dog? I can. Then came a "great job" and a lesson on sentence structure. I just had to share this one. Too cute to pass up.
We are hoping to finish up our lapbook tomorrow and I will try to post about it then. Stay tuned.....

Contest...Books

In celebration of my 100th post on this blog I am going to do a contest that will benefit someone out there that reads and comments on my blog.

A while back a public school teacher gave me a ton of books. What a great teacher. I have doubles of lots of the books. Some of these books were used by the teacher and have little sticky notes in them and some don't but they are nice books and and they were free books. Now you have a chance to have some of my doubles and I have a box full.

Here are the rules to this contest.

1. Come read my blog and leave a comment.

2. Leave at least one comment so I know you came and read and that's it.

3. Contest is from Jan 21-Feb 4.

4. Winner will be picked from those that came and left comments. Winner will be announced on Feb 4th. We'll get in touch and soon after that you'll get some free books in the mail.

Easy as that!

The prize is the following....

...and anyone can enter as long as you leave me a comment. I will probably do this contest again since I have so many books. So keep checking back if you don't win the first time.

Another nature moment

Talk about seeing snow! This was our trip last year to Canada. I went up to visit my friend and we had fun. I saw things I never saw before. There were ducks and different birds you don't see down here in Texas. We don't see snow very often and never like we played in over there. We rented a cabin in Banff and enjoyed our time together.

Don't you think this should be a postcard? It's interesting driving down the road while taking pictures. The mountains were beautiful.
This is leaving Banff and those wonderful snow covered mountains.
Not many of these here in Texas either. We saw them everywhere.

I love this picture. All the trees were bare and you could see the white bark on them.
With all this nature and seeing things I have never seen before well, I plan to continue.

Learning about Nature

Some of you may know that I love nature and taking pictures of those perfect place and of different animals. Well, maybe you all know by now. hehehe I think the most incredible place I went to was The Grand Canyon. Sorry no pictures. That was way before digital cameras. Anyway, the next place I went to visit was a friend in California. I still remember sitting in the backyard and listening to the leaves blowing in the breeze. It was fun. She took me to see Yosemite and Lake Tahoe. Isn't Half Dome amazing? What impressed me about this picture is that if you look all the way down you can see people. There were several magnificent waterfalls.

I think this trip rekindled my love of nature. Ever since then I've been with my camera in hand and looking for those beautiful shots. Having so much to do with school and our other activities limits the amount of time we have to go out to some nice outdoor places like these. Not to mention that we live in Texas and most of Texas is flat. Not very exciting.

So mostly I've been slowly getting the boys involved in outdoor/nature fun things for a while. Our next project is making some 2 liter bottle bird feeders for our birds. Here are two sites that I usually go on to get inspired. One is Barb's nature site and her other site. The other is the Handbook of Nature Study yahoo group.

I like all my bird ID guides and of course I've finally started figuring how to use The Handbook of Nature Study book. It's a very intimidating book because of its size and lack of color in the pictures but it has grown on me.

I also got a book on a trip to Half Price books. I got The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. I love to look at that book. One other book that I've been looking over is Keeping a Nature Journal.

So there you have my nature side. Did you figure I had all that in me?

History Fun

We've been having fun with our new tradition of having tea time and reading. Since we are reading up on Marco Polo I thought it was the right time to read more of our book. I don't ever remember learning so much about Marco Polo when I was in school. This has been fun.
We also decided to do something different and take some time to do a lapbook on him. Since HOAC had a Marco Polo freebie I knew we had to do that one. As you can see we are not done yet but I thought I would show the project in progress. This is the first folder.
We have a little more done on the second folder. They still need to color and finish up a few more to add and fill up the folders.
All the boys are doing this but this is my 5yr olds lapbook. I thought I would show you his handwriting. He loves to write and I am glad about that.
We love reading the series of books Who Was....They have lots of drawings in them and are non-fiction. We have read a few already on different people and I do suggest these books. We also got this Marco Polo movie from Netflix. It's not rated but it's a Hallmark Channel movie and so far I am enjoying it. Although be warned, it is an almost 3hr movie so we are watching it in parts.

Now since I am talking about movies have any of you seen Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure? We also got it from Netflix and even though it is a movie about some high school kids it has some history in it. This movie is rated PG and is 1 hr and 30mins. Talk about the right humor for my kids. They were rolling on the floor on some parts.

We had a full day of learning including watching movies. I love homeschool.

Picture Quiz

I went to visit my friend in California in 2004. I was going thru those pictures and found a few perfect for my picture quiz. I have enough for two Wednesdays so the other one will wait for next week. Here is this weeks picture quiz. Can you tell me what bird this is? My friend took me to Yosemite and I was able to take this picture as it came very close to us. It is beautiful. Although all of Yosemite was breathtaking I have never seen this bird in person till then. Oh what great memories this brings.

Ok so take your guess. Leave me a comment with your guess and I will post the answer this weekend. Is this one a bit more challenging? Did some of you have to look it up?

UPDATE: Yes, yes, yes!! This is a Steller Jay. We don't see them in Texas so I love that I was able to take this and he was not at a zoo but in his own natural surroundings.

How about an orchid?

We went to visit a friends husband who is very sick on Sunday morning. He has some orchids that are over 50yrs old. He has a greenhouse in the back that is heated in winter and has fans and vents for the summer. These flowers are truly amazing.



Isn't this orchid amazing?
These were tiny flowers all on one long stem.
I love yellow roses and yellow orchids are beautiful also.
I had to take this one. I just love my new camera. I can now take pictures like this and see the bee in mid-air.

What beautiful flowers. Some even had a wonderful scent.

Fun Friday

We got together with a few friends and had a blow up day. We did mentos and diet coke again just for this day. As you can see it was a big hit. The kids had a blast. There were a few that were soaked with the soda.

This picture gives you an idea as to how high it went. If you are wondering how we got it so high...well, Patty got us an attachment for the soda bottle and you put the mentos in that and it has a little pull thing to let the mentos all come out at once. It shot out like a rocket. The boys would run away but when flew up they all came running back to take a drink as it was coming down. It was fun for us moms too.
We also did the alka-seltzer and film canister experiment. We tried different canisters and the ones with the black caps didn't do as well as the white ones did. A fun time was had by all including us moms.
I'm looking forward to our next gathering. Hope we have a few more join us next time.