Words

Zoe loves to make words. She does this on her own. Here she is making a word search (of sorts). After she was finished she asked me to do it. It's interesting how kids can be so different Austyn never really liked anything like this. He goes through little spurts of liking it, usually when there is a good reason (a strong interest).

Volunteering and Lacrosse

 We are pretty involved in Lacrosse. Both kids travel with their team. Daddy Volunteers as a coach for Lacrosse, I am the photographer, and Zoe shakes the coin tin and goes around to collect change for their end-of-season Party. We all have volunteered at a big game and plan on doing it again. It was fun!

 Austyn was so proud of himself this weekend. He got his first goal of the season. He was made Player of the Game and was given this hat to wear until the next game. He also was made Assistant Captain! He was SO HAPPY!

Beach Weather

 One thing we missed last year, while living in Alberta, were the beaches. I kept seeing Facebook posts with pictures of all of our friends on the beach and felt strange that we couldn't go to one. There are beaches in Alberta, but they aren't the same. Many of the lakes are not okay for swimming and aren't large. I loved Alberta, but this was one downfall. The upside was that the temperatures never felt hot enough to need the beach. 

 We visited the beach for the first time for our Co-Op end-of-year picnic. The weather was extremely hot. It was in the 30's and humid. This is strange for May weather.

 The water was still cold, but the kids enjoyed looking for interesting rocks and shells.

In the distance, over the lake, we could see other people enjoying the lakes and the early hot weather.

Our Garden

 We finally got grass for our yard and around the same time we built these raised beds. I'm trying a similar type of gardening to square foot gardening. I've been reading a bunch of gardening books and am taking ideas from each one and making it our own. We are using the potato technique from square foot gardening, where you plant the potatoes in only a couple of inches of soil and keep adding soil as the potatoes sprout to create a deep root that produces more potatoes in a smaller space. My potatoes are at the front of the middle box. I'm using natural wood trellises and have secured them with string to prevent them from blowing over. Many gardens have been devastated this spring due to the rabbits but although I've found some signs of rabbits near the garden, I've not had anything eaten yet. Maybe they are too lazy to jump a foot to get over these raised beds.

I started many of our plants indoors. The kids helped me plant them. We have a peanut plant and some artichoke plants to plant still. They grow too big for our gardens so we'll need to add them to the side garden when we finally get to it. We have carrots, sunflowers, beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, salad greens, broccoli, and much more. All of it fit into our three raised beds. It may be a flop or not, but it'll be interesting to see how things go, since this is my first year trying to garden this way. Experiments are always fun and educational!

Austyn's Photography

 I'm not so proud of this picture, due to my appearance, but this picture is a good example of Austyn's photography, when using my camera. After we moved here, I found my old camera and gave it to him. It's a nice size for him and takes good quality outdoor shots (the flash is broken), but sometimes he just can't resist using my camera. He likes to take candid shots, like above and when he uses my camera the shots are on a slight angle. I'm assuming the angle is due to the size and weight of my newer camera (Nikon D7000). He has taken pictures around the house, at lacrosse games, and homeschool events.

 This is his favourite plant in our garden because it is mint and he loves it when I make fresh mint tea.

 I think that some pictures I find on my camera are cute. This is Zoe with her usual forehead spot. She thinks that the women who wear the spots on their foreheads are beautiful and likes to imitate them sometimes.

 Some of his pictures are funny!

 Some pictures are a tiny bit odd, but I can see the creative thinking that is going on.

 Some are creative and have interesting focus.

I think it's really cool that he is interested in photography. He must be taking after his mom since I love to take pictures!

Book Sharing Monday - A Butterfly Is Patient

Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long did a wonderful job on this book about butterflies.

We thoroughly enjoyed this one!

With it's beautiful illustrations and descriptive wording, we learned what a butterfly's life is like. We learned things like how butterflies find flowers and how they help plants. What a great book to learn about butterflies!

New Neighbours!

We live in a new area and there is construction all around us. With construction, comes a great deal of dirt. There is dirt on the streets and piles of dirt everywhere. One day while on a walk I noticed some barn swallows start to dive for me and knew, from experience, that this meant that I was near a nest. So, after a quick chat with the birds and some observation, I figured out that they were digging  a hole in a pile of dirt to make a nest. 

A couple of days later, I noticed that there were many more birds. We took a walk over, after a rain storm, to take a closer look and realized that there were many barn swallows making this hill their home. Knowing that this isn't a good situation for the birds, because this is only a temporary hill that the builders will likely bulldoze soon, I decided that it was okay to get up close and disturb them. Maybe they will move to a more permanent residence.

Zoe was surprised and excited that she could get up close and look inside the holes. A couple of the adults were hiding inside and zoomed out, right by her head. They didn't come back to bother us so I am guessing that there still were no babies or eggs. Hopefully they moved out before they decided to lay their eggs so that their babies aren't harmed by the construction.

This is just a stark reminder of how humans affect the animals who live near us.