Eat Taco Soup

January 29 is National Corn Chip Day.  It's also National Puzzle Day.
So make a big pot of taco soup,

grab a puzzle to play with your family, and look at this picture of wood ducks.

I'm going to continue to take care of a sick child... and eat taco soup.

Not Doing Much

I've got a couple of sick kids at home.  It's going to be an Animaniacs watching day today.

On a different note, the other day, Jeremy, Jr. Jr., Lucky, and I went for a drive up Provo Canyon- up the road passed Big Springs area.  We saw several different birds, including a steller's jay, which I hadn't seen in Utah yet (I usually see western scrub-jays), but I grew up with steller's jays in our backyard in Oregon.

We also saw some wild turkeys, a western scrub-jay, a downy woodpecker, some goldfinches, and black-capped chickadees.

And deer.  We saw several deer.

 There are deer in this picture.  You may have to click on the picture to make it bigger.

 

 It was a beautiful day.  I was so happy to be out in nature.

Jurassic Park Marathon

January 25 is A Room of One's Own Day.  Today, I took a day off.  Well, most of a day off.  Jeremy did have to go do some work stuff and was gone for several hours.  But I was able to spend most of the day in my room... alone.  I put on the first three Jurassic Park movies as background noise as I went over some organizational stuff.  Jeremy brought me food from time to time.  He's so awesome.
I also took time for dinner with the family and Family Home Evening.  Jeremy got the kids to bed and after they were in bed, he and I watched Jurassic World.

It was a dinosaur day for me.

Adorableness

Jr. Jr. wanted to make a picture on the magnadoodle.  He made some very lovely flowers, mostly tulips, including one in a glass case.

Lucky follows his brother's example.  He also wanted to make a picture of tulips.  Here is his picture:

It can be so adorable what younger siblings learn from their older siblings.

And because it's fun to see their creativity, here are some other masterpieces from earlier in the year and the end of last year.

The first one is Jr.'s and the other one I think is Jr. Jr.'s.

What to Write? What to Write?

I don't know what to write.  Here are some pictures.

Hugs and Squirrels and Ducks

January 21 is National Hug Day.  It's also Squirrel Appreciation Day.  There was hugging going on in our home today.  I didn't get pictures.  There was also squirrel appreciating as kids were watching Slappy the Squirrel on Animaniacs.  I didn't get pictures.
This evening, Jeremy and Jr. went to Salem Pond to see some birds- especially different kinds of ducks.  They got pictures.
We identified some new for us species and Jeremy and Jr. saw a bald eagle and a muskrat.

 

 Redhead and Canvasback

 Lesser Scaups and Ruddy Duck

Penguin Awareness Day 2016

For Penguin Awareness Day, January 20, we had our traditional dinner of fish sticks.  When I was telling Jr. Jr. yesterday that we were going to have fish sticks, he said, "We should have mustard fish sticks for those people who don't want pudding with their fish sticks."  Oh, yeah.  We've trained our kids to think that fish fingers and custard go together.

So for dinner we put out mustard and vanilla pudding and tartar sauce and ranch dressing (because we also had carrots).

I also colored a picture of a penguin on the beach.

The End.

Brew a Potion Day 2016

This year for Brew a Potion Day on January 19, I got out ingredients

and let everyone brew their own potion.

We still have so many hot cocoa mixes and lots of things to add in so we used those.  We told the kids they could only use certain amounts of certain items (no using a cup and a half of cinnamon), but they could use a variety.
Jeremy and I were right there to supervise and I did not get out the food coloring this year (2013 reference to this holiday).
Some of the potions had special properties.  Lucky's was a snuggle potion. 

Jr. Jr.'s was a hugging potion. 

Jeremy's turned him into a train (see the mug he used).

Jr.'s was a polyjuice potion with a piece of Neville's hair in it (Harry Potter reference).  He let me know that's why he tripped over Daddy's foot later in the evening.

It was fun to see what everyone wanted in their hot chocolate and that we had so much to choose from.  This was a fun family way of celebrating the holiday.

Day Off

So what happens when you have a day off of school and no shows scheduled?  If it were up to the kids, they'd just want to play video games all day.  If it were up to the parents, they'd want to go bird watching.
We didn't want our kids wasting all day playing video games, even if Nichole had a friend over.  She and her friend got to play on the Wii for a little while then we all hopped in the van and headed up to Antelope Island.  The whole way, Jeremy and I were hoping that the weather wouldn't be too bad.  It was supposed to be somewhat rainy and snowy today.  There was quite a bit of rain and a tiny bit of snow on the way there and on the way back but while we were there, it wasn't too bad.  We are so glad we didn't just turn around and go home.  It was great.
We saw deer, bison, coyotes, and a bunch of birds.

Still working on identifying some of them and we didn't get pictures, just video, of northern harriers, but here are some we did identify (in no particular order):

 red-winged blackbirds

 chukars

 white-crowned sparrows

 

 magpie

 red-tailed hawk

  American kestrels

 I think these are American tree sparrows

*Update:  I changed my mind.  I do not think these are actually American tree sparrows.  I believe they are also white-crowned sparrows, like the birds in some of the above pictures.  These are immature white-crowned sparrows, which is why they have more reddish markings instead of the black on the head.*

 

Some of the still pictures didn't turn out- we also saw northern shovelers, mallards, other ducks, goldeneyes, California gulls, and crows or ravens.

Some of the kids and I even did some hiking.

It was a good day.