For the Birds

Today I went to the park in the hour I had between leaving work and picking Tyler up from school. Unfortunately I didn't get many decent pictures. I saw an eagle, but I couldn't get very close. Several of us were admiring him from afar (with binoculars and zoom lenses) when some guy with a cell phone tromped over to his tree to get a cell phone picture and scared him away. That was annoying.



Mature cooper's hawk

The mature cooper's hawk landed in our neighbor's tree tonight. I took this from way inside the house looking through the transom window, so it is really bad, but I wanted to show the immature and mature cooper's hawks next to each other. I think the change is kind of neat. You can't see it in this picture, but the mature one has red eyes. His back turns more gray, too. They keep their immature plummage for a year, so it's possible this mature hawk is the immature one I photographed last winter.

Immature cooper's hawk

This and That

Clara's attempt at a snow angel

Bird activity in our yard was hopping again today. This young cooper's hawk landed in our yard at least 4 different times today. I'm rooting for him to thin out our house sparrow population, but he hasn't caught anything yet. We have a mature cooper's hawk that stops by, too, but I haven't seen him for a few days.

Here are some pictures from Danielle's basketball game yesterday. We won 26-7. Danielle played a good game.

Danielle was a little mismatched size-wise for the 1st quarter, but she held her own.

Danielle had just knocked the ball away from the girl in black. She made it down the court but rushed and missed her shot. It was still a great play!

She was a little more evenly matched this quarter!



Tyler volunteered to work the concession stand so we didn't have to. I think he was the only customer until after the game ended.

This one hit the backboard, rolled around the rim, and fell out. It was close.

She missed this shot, too, but she kept trying. They'll fall eventually.

For the Birds

We had a slow but steady snowfall most of the day today. I think that caused the birds to be very active in my backyard! Here are some of the birds that visited me today. I didn't get any pictures (today) of the bluejays, house sparrows, mourning doves, or song sparrows, but they were in the mix today, too.

Female cardinal

Male cardinal

 

 

Carolina chickadee

Dark eyed junco

Downy woodpecker

Cooper's hawk

House finch & American goldfinch

American robin

 

Tree sparrow

 

Starling

 

 

Decorating Doors

Doing a family art project was an option for Danielle's contest entry. Since we occasionally do family art projects and usually enjoy them, we thought that would be a fun one to pick. Now that the kids are older, we do them less often, so it was nice to have an excuse to make the time. That said, we were so caught up in painting the doors last night that Tyler & I both forgot he needed to leave a little time to study for a science test! Oops.

We painted the doors once before, and it was also around this time of year. This time of year can be so gray and depressing. The bright colors & cute pictures are a good pick-me-up. We used Crayola Washable Tempera Paints and mixed in a few drops of Dawn dishsoap to make clean up a little easier.

Ron came up with the theme. Tyler painted the left door; Danielle painted the right. Ron and I added a few things here and there. We had a lot of fun doing this together. It makes me smile every time I walk into the kitchen and the colors catch my eye.

Family Time

Danielle's age group at church is having an Amazing Race - Family Style challenge. We were given a calendar at the beginning of the month with 24 different ideas on it for spending time together as a family. To participate, you have to do 15 activities and document each one with a photo. All 15 photos have to be emailed to the church by 2/1. Then all the entrants get their name entered in a drawing for indoor waterpark tickets. Our church is huge, so I don't know how much of a chance Danielle really has, but it was fun. A lot of these things we do anyway, so we just had to remember to take a picture at some point. Here are the 15 photos we submitted.

Do a family art project.
We've done this before and thought it would be fun to do again. It was! More on this tomorrow.

Exercise as a family.

Pick a chore day.

Do a 5-10 minute family devotional.

Eat dinner as a family.
We do this every single night but I can never remember to take a picture! This was Ron's birthday dinner.

Choose a family verse and post it in your house.
Danielle really wanted this verse, so we picked it and hung it in our downstairs bath. 

Play a board game.

Make a meal together.
Ever hear the saying "too many cooks in the kitchen"?! Enough said.

Watch a movie together.
We do this almost every Friday night, plus we went to the theater this month, but I never got a picture. I did get a picture of the popcorn on the cob we made for movie night, though!

Do an outside activity

Read a chapter of the Bible together.
I have to admit we picked a very short chapter in Psalms.

Indoor snowball fight w/paper.
This one made me cringe because the thought of wads of paper all over the place makes me anxious! My house is messy enough without creating a mess on purpose! Danielle decided we could use rolled socks, which was perfect.

Ice cream sundae day.
We didn't have the supplies on hand (nor do we like whipped cream), so we enjoyed bowls of cookie dough ice cream instead.

Themed day
We decided to have a speak Spanish night (while at the Mexican restaurant), although we could have picked pj day since at least 1/2-3/4 of us don't change out of our pjs on Sundays during the winter!

Make a family wish list of 15 activities to do this year
We were stretching it a bit on #s 7 & 8.