Weekdays of Celebrating

Now that we're transitioning back to school, our celebrating has simplified. There's not time to do as much. So here are a few things we were able to fit in the second week of school.

 

Monday, August 23 was Gene Kelly's birthday. The kids wanted to watch Singin' in the Rain but their wasn't time that day. It was also National Sponge Cake Day. Jeremy bought us chocolate twinkies but there wasn't time for those either. There was time a couple days later so people got to eat twinkies while watching Singin' in the Rain.

 

Tuesday, August 24, was National Waffle Day and Vesuvius Day. One of the kids suggested we have an explosion of syrup on our waffles. Heh Heh Heh. I opened the syrup carefully to see if it exploded before we put it on our waffles.

Wednesday, August 25, was National Banana Split Day. The kids got to have banana splits for after school snack.

Thursday, August 26, was Dog Day. We had squid pups again.

Friday, August 27, was Banana Lovers Day. Yep. More banana eating.

Spring Break- Wednesday

This day was so action packed it gets its own blog post.

We started out early in the morning to head to the Henefer Lek to listen to and watch the sage grouse displaying. It was fun to take the whole family this year. Most of the kids have never gone (like I said it is an early morning trip). It worked out. Jet mostly slept through the whole sage grouse part of it. He started stirring as soon as we got to the lek. It's not so good to have a baby crying while you have windows down. We got him back to sleep, though. 

The boys in the back seat were content because they had devices. 

They did pause to listen to and look at the sage grouse from time to time.

 

Nichole, Jeremy, and I were content because we had a camera and binoculars.

There were a bunch of grouse near the road so we were able to get a good look when we were on our way out. 

After the lek, we headed over to East Canyon Reservoir. It was coooooold.

There were plenty of birds and ground squirrels to take pictures of, though. I even got to hear a loon in real life for the first time ever. I've been wanting to and I did. I was so happy.

We picnicked in the van at another spot along the reservoir. Since I forgot to bring out the Twinkies the day before, we celebrated the anniversary of the invention of the Twinkie Observed on Wednesday and had them with our lunch. While we ate, I gave the kids a background about how the Twinkie came to be.

After the reservoir, we stopped at another reservoir, Deer Creek, to look for more loons. There were at least a couple and guess what. We heard another loon calling. Eeeeeeee. I was even more happy. Two loons at two different reservoirs. Yay! 

Jet was ready to be awake by that point so we decided to go somewhere where he could run around. We went to South Fork Park. This is what we got when we arrived. 

This

vs this

Eventually everybody got out so we could get family pictures with Flat Stanley.

This is what happens when you get out so early in the morning. You fit a lot in. Jeremy and I were even able to get a nap in after we got home before we had an Easter Egg hunt in the back yard. Much different from last year when Jet could barely reach the eggs on the living room floor.

He even enjoyed playing with the empty eggs after we got back inside (we had the kids empty their eggs into ziplock bags so we wouldn't have all this candy sitting in eggs for so long).

So it really was an action packed day. We haven't had one of those in a while. I'm so glad it worked out.

 

By the way, April 7 was National No Housework Day. Perfect day for all of this. It was also National Walking Day. Perfect for running around at the park. It was also World Health Day. Getting out in nature is so good for our health.

Spring Break- Monday and Tuesday

For Spring Break I explained to the kids that we can do cleaning in the morning, get some outside time in the afternoon, and watch a movie in the evening. Simple enough, right? Um... yeah. Sure.

When dealing with multiple people who have their own interests or ways of doing things and weather that doesn't always cooperate and a mom who wants to fit holiday celebrating into the activities, sometimes things don't go exactly right. The kids and I planned out our week and... we adapted.

So this is the fun we did have on Monday and Tuesday (because I'm guessing you don't care as much about what cleaning we did):

Monday, the kids and I went for a drive. While we drove, Jr. had us play a game. One person calls out a word on a sign (since we were in the middle of the city for a while, it worked out). Whatever letter that word ends in, another person calls out a word they see on a sign that begins with that letter. You can't call out two words in a row, you have to wait until someone else finds a word before you can do it again. It was pretty fun until we reached "DQ." We were not on a road with a Quick Quack Car Wash, which would have made it simple, so we had to wait until after our outing to continue the game when we did pass a Quick Quack Car Wash on the way home. 

Our outing? We drove up to Big Springs Park and played frisbee. We had "Daddy" there with us as well as Flat Stanley who came home with Lucky for Spring Break.

After we got home we did get to watch a movie. 

Since April 5 was Gold Star Spouse's Day, I printed out a gold star to put on Jeremy's shirt when he got home. 

He is a most terrific spouse. When I'm in the middle of writing a blog post, if I step away (which often happens- Mom, here), some of my kids will sometimes come in and add "My husband is awesome." See, they know it. Sometimes I leave it in. Sometimes I take it out (my husband is still awesome, though) if it really doesn't fit what I was writing right then. So if you're reading my blog and a random "My husband is awesome" is in a blog post, my kids probably wrote it and it's true.

I didn't realize it but while I was making dinner that night, Jr. came up and put a gold star on my back. Aww. What a sweetie.

Tuesday, it snowed. We didn't get out like we planned. I did make a quick trip to the Provo Library to pick up some things that were being held for us. April 6 was Library Workers Day. See my post from March 25 of this year to read my opinion on library workers.

April 6 was also National Carbonara Day. I did make carbornara with French bread on the side.

That evening we colored hard boiled eggs with crayons.

April 6 was also the anniversary of the invention of the Twinkie but I totally forgot to get out the Twinkies to celebrate.

WAFLS Day

One of the days of Spring Break was National Read a Roadmap Day, April 5.  Jeremy signed up to participate in a study/survey of short-eared owls so we all got to go with him that day.
The survey is known as "Western Asio Flammeus Landscape Study" or "WAFLS."  It is to help track short-eared owl populations in a few different states.  We were given an area.  We made a route to follow roads in that area and made several stops to get out and look around for short-eared owls.  We did use our handy dandy road map printed off the computer for the survey.  It was great to celebrate the holiday that way.

Before we started the survey, we drove the route backward to write down habitats for each of our stops- grassland or agricultural area, things like that.  Then we stopped at our starting point to let everyone out to run around for a little while and gather our on-the-road dinner from the cooler and bags in the trunk. 

It would be too hard to get everyone out at each stop, so the kids stayed in the van reading books in a silly manner to each other and eating their food and snacks.  Jeremy and I stepped just outside the van so we could look around.  We took turns with the clipboard and with the binoculars and camera at each area.

At our second to last stop, Jeremy did see a short-eared owl but just through the binoculars.  We weren't able to get any pictures of it.  Then another bird flew across the road and away from us, but we weren't able to identify it.  It may have been a short-eared owl, but it could have been something else.  Oh well.  We saw plenty of other birds, though.

Before we left home for the WAFLS survey, Jeremy made waffles for us and had each of us in the family fill out our own Waffles Survey.

click on it to see it larger

Jeremy saw a short-eared owl, we saw lots of ground squirrels, but no short-eared owls eating ground squirrels nor ground squirrels eating waffles nor short-eared owls eating ground squirrels in the process of eating waffles.
When Jeremy mentioned that we ate waffles before heading out and that he did see a short-eared owl, the project leader in our area told everyone to eat waffles before they go out again to improve their mojo.  There weren't a lot of short-eared owls to be found in Utah the first time around.
WAFLS requires us to go out again through the same route on a different day to see if there are any differences.  We'll be eating waffles again before we go out.  I still want to see a definite short-eared owl.

On a different note, the next day, April 6, was the anniversary of the invention of the Twinkie.  The kids went over to the home of friends and their mom, my good friend, had bought Twinkies for them to have to celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Twinkie

Here, kids.  Let me show you the proper way to eat a Twinkie.  

You take it like this and...

*Stuff*

Mrrfhrrmffhrrmffr.

Ta-Da.  

Now that's how to celebrate the invention of the Twinkie on April 6, 1930.