The Beautiful Outdoors

Today we enjoyed what seems to be the last nice day for a while by heading to a cute little tourist town about an hour away. It was quite a bit chillier there because of the wind, but ended up being a really good day.

We spent the first part of the morning at the nature center, where they rescue animals that can't be returned to the wild. T got to see birds, wolves, coyotes, foxes, elk, deer, and a handful of other animals. Sadly, the bears were still hiberating so he missed them, but he seemed to have a great time nonetheless.


Poor T backed into this bear while we were there and jumped about a foot in the air. Once he realized it wasn't going to eat him, he begged to take pictures with it.

Afterward, we made our usual stops throughout town -- the toy store and the candy store are must-sees. I found geodes in the toystore, so I picked a couple up. I loved geodes as a kid. Still do, actually. I walked out of the candy store with half a pound of fudge that will not last long in this house. We wandered through town, then went down to the river, where hubby (his name is Joe, so I don't have to forever call him hubby) and T climbed on the rocks and had a snowball fight.



We drove some of the back roads and saw an abundance of deer and turkeys.


This one followed our car for a good 300 feet, and would repeatedly walk right in front of our moving car without a care in the world. They may be pretty, but no one ever said they had a whole lot of sense about them.

We made it back home just in time for dinner. It seems we visited just in time. The area we were in is now under a winter storm warning, which is supposed to hit sometime tonight.

Thankfully, our area seems to only be getting rain for the time being. I'm ready for spring!

Hey, Look What I Got!

I got the Lemons to Lemonade award, courtesy of The Snail's Trail. Thank you so much!

The rules of the award are as follows:
1) Put the logo on your blog or post.
2) Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great attitude or gratitude.
3) Link to your nominees within your post.
4) Let the nominees know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5) Share the love and link to the person from who you received your award.

I'm passing this award along to:

5 Orange Potatoes
fly to my window
Gee Whiz
The Exploration Station
The O'Neal Family News
Living and Learning

...Hmm, I'm getting an error when I try to save this with more links in it. How strange. So I guess I'll be a rebel and only pass this along to six bloggers instead. ;)

Volcano Eruption

Today's weather was just about perfect. After a week or so of below-zero temps, upper 50s was wonderful! I don't know what the problem was with the paint we used on the poster board volcano, but it didn't fully dry until tonight, well over 24 hours after painting it. We took it outside to erupt right before dinner. Hubby was off work (finally -- I hate when he works Saturdays), so he assisted while I took pictures.

I filled the bottle with warm water, a few drops of liquid detergent, red food coloring, and some baking soda. We added vinegar, and this was our result:



I thought it was neat. However, T was thoroughly disappointed that it didn't put off ash, blow the top off the volcano, or make loud noises. Oh well. Ya can't win 'em all.

St. Patrick's Day Parade

We had a lot of fun. I had to drag T back to the car afterward.

But would you believe I counted three separate people texting while driving cars pulling floats through the parade??

Shamrocks and Volcanoes

T and I spent the morning doing St. Patrick's Day related crafts. He's been on a crafty kick lately, and I'm going with it. He so rarely let me do crafts with him, that this is a nice change of pace.

We made a rainbow paper chain to hang over the doorway between the kitchen and dining room:



We also melted crayon between wax paper, I cut them into shamrock shapes, and T hung them in the window. Forgive the awfulness of the window picture -- my camera batteries were nearly dead, so I snapped the picture as quickly as possible. You get the idea.



We spent this afternoon working on something different. T has been fascinated with volcanoes for a long time. He spent a fair amount of time on this site, creating his own volcanic eruptions.

We talked about the gasses building up pressure within a volcano, and to describe what I meant, we used the fail-proof balloon trick. It gave me a good excuse to indulge myself with a Pepsi (it's for the kids!), and once I drank it, we poured vinegar into the bottle, added baking soda into the balloon, attached it to the bottle, and watched what happened.



We then put the Pepsi bottle to another use -- creating a mock volcano out of poster board. The poster board we had was too small, so we improvised (here's hoping it works tomorrow!). T painted it today. We'll try to "erupt" it tomorrow night.



T is really enjoying all things volcano related. I think this could be a lot of fun, as long as I can keep brainstorming other activities!

Things That Make Me Happy

I went out today with a set plan. We would run to the store, pick up a few necessary food items I forgot to add to my shopping list, fill up the car with gas, and come straight home.

Well, I may (and I'm not admitting anything here) have accidentally gotten distracted and found myself standing in the mall instead.

And I may or may not have walked out two hours later with some of the best sales ever.

If (and only if) this were the case, my findings may have been along the lines of:

-Eight shirts
-Two pairs of pants
-Snowpants
-Gloves
-A jacket
-Three sweatshirts
-A beautiful blue Columbia coat
(all of this for T)

-A gorgeous coat for myself.

The coats may have looked something like this:




The grand total for the day? $106.

That Columbia coat? $26. Normally $95.

Bow to me. I am the master of sales.

I admit it. The shopping spree happened.

(goes to hide credit card from self)

Questions

My camera is doing something weird right now, so the pictures I have will have to wait until later tonight. In the meantime, I borrowed a cute set of questions to ask T. Here are his answers. I completely lost it at his answer to #21.

1. What is something mom always says to you?
I love you.

2. What makes mom happy?
When I listen to her.

3. What makes mom sad?
Some shows on TV are sad.

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
Telling me knock-knock jokes.

5. What was your mom like as a child?
Food.

6. How old is your mom?
Very, very old. Like 20 or 30.

7. How tall is your mom?
40 feet.

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
Paint and do the dishes and color.

9. What does your mom do when you’re not around?
Eat.

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
Painting.

11. What is your mom really good at?
Eating.

12. What is your mom not very good at?
Jumping up and down, because she doesn't have a pogo stick.

13. What does your mom do for a job?
Clean the dishes.

14.What is your mom’s favorite food?
Chinese food. She makes me eat it ALL the time.

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
I forgot. Do we have any granola bars?

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Spiderman.

17. What do you and your mom do together?
Paint and color.

18. How are you and your mom the same?
Bones hold us together.

19. How are you and your mom different?
I'm short and she's tall.

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
Mommy's my best friend.

21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
His wallet.

22. Where is your mom’s favorite place to go?
To eat Chinese food!

Giggle-inducing

Add this to the list of things you never thought you'd hear your child say.

T: "Mommy, you stay there while I go get my castrator!"
Me: "Your WHAT?"
T: "Castrator, Mommy, my castrator!"
Me: (trying not to laugh) "OK, show me what that is."
T: (comes back out of his closet carrying a shoebox) "See Mom? It's my castrator. You can buy things and I'll put money in it."
Me: "Ohhhh, you mean cash register?"
T: "Yeah, Mom, that's what I said. My castrator."

We might want to work on that pronunciation before he starts school.

Today's Accomplishment

T lost his first tooth!

Using Up Old Crayons

Peel paper off crayons; break into pieces. Arrange in shaped tinfoil muffin tins (I used stars, found at the dollar store). Place on cookie sheet and preheat oven to 250.



Place in oven and heat until melted (about 5 minutes, give or take). Take out and let cool.



When cooled, peel foil away from crayon and let cool fully on newspaper.