Eagles and Blackbirds and Real Birds, Oh My

 Jeremy is a bird eater, a one eyed, one horned, flying purple birdy eater.

 

O.K. This is what happens when I get started on a post but don't have time to continue blogging. My kids step in and... well, you saw the first line of this post.

 

What I was going to say was Jeremy had a balloon gig coming up where he was building a jet based on one that actually existed so as a family, we went up to Hill Aerospace Museum to see it. 

Research!

 

Here's the story: Back in the 60's, that's 1960s, Murray City acquired a retired jet, a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star. Do you want to know what they did with it? They turned it into a slide. Yep, a playground slide at Murray Park, where kids could climb up one side and slide down the other. Around 1990, it was retired as a slide and taken to Hill Air Force Base. It was repainted (and whatever else needed to be done) and hung in the Hadley Gallery of the Hill Aerospace Museum. Ta-da. So we went to see the real jet and later Jeremy (and Debbie) built it out of balloons.

 

Here's the real thing:

 

Here is the balloon jet: 

 

Here is an informational poster they had at the event:

 

And here is our family at the Hill Aerospace Museum: 

It was a nice family activity. I loved seeing Jet with the jets. Tee Hee. I told the kids that the last time I went to this museum was when I was a little girl myself. One or two of our kids had visited for youth activities but this was the first time as a whole family.

We saw lots and lots of aircraft and Jet and Lucky both picked out pennies to squish. Jet's was an Eagle and Lucky's was a Blackbird. We made sure to get pictures of them with their pennies with their aircraft.

 

After we got home, a few of us went down to Utah Lake State Park to see real birds. It was a windy day, a wonderfully windy day. It was so fun to see waves flying up onto the rocks while we were there. So fun.

Lucky especially loved it.

We saw some birds, too. 

It was a long, busy, but good day. 

Another Good Day

On July 30, instead of doing chores in the morning, we went out for a walk along the Provo River before it got too hot. As we were walking along looking for birds, what should fly past us at 10:45 in the morning? A bat. It flew past us and over to a tree and crawled into a hole to get some rest. That was kind of fun.

We had a good walk and did see and hear some birds.

We stopped at Utah Lake State Park to look at grebes before heading home. There was a juvenile who kept squawking and rushing over each time a parent surfaced. "I'm hungry. Give me food." Sometimes they had something for it to eat. It was fun to watch the grebes and for Nichole to get pictures.

When we got home, we had lunch, then the kids got to work on chores. They got done in a decent enough time and were able to have plenty of free time and enjoyed playing card games together. It was a nice feeling.

I also got dinner made in a decent enough time. We had chili dogs for the holiday, National Chili Dog Day.

Later after some of the kids went to bed, I celebrated another July 30 holiday, National Cheesecake Day, by making a microwave cheesecake. I goofed up a little but it was still yummy. I'll just have to make it again sometime and do it right.

Relaxation

August 15 is Relaxation Day.  A good way for me to relax is birding.  I got the chance today to go birding with a group of birders from around Utah County.  We went up into the mountains to a nice spot where today's group leader had seen a three-toed woodpecker.
We missed that woodpecker today.  We may have heard it drumming and calling but we only saw hairy woodpeckers and northern flickers.  And lots and lots of other birds.  Ah, relaxing.

Dark-eyed junco and house wren

After the field trip was over, a group of us went on to Utah Lake to look at shore birds.  Lots and lots of shore birds.  Ah, relaxing.

The only way I could get a picture of a solitary sandpiper was through the window of the vehicle I was riding in.  If we tried to get out, it flew away.

I didn't even have to go on a snipe hunt this time to get better pictures of a Wilson's snipe.

To add to the relaxation, when I got home, I found out that a woman in our ward had some extra food left over from a family function and dropped some off for us.  That made dinner easy to figure out and prepare.  Ah, relaxing.

I like this holiday.

Kite Day Observed

May 12 is Kite Day.  We couldn't celebrate it on that day this year since we went to Nichole's wax museum that night.
We've been wanting to fly kites at the beach ever since we went there on a somewhat windy evening during Screen Free Week.  There were a couple of young ladies there with kites and we talked about doing that for Kite Day, except we couldn't do it on the actual holiday.
So we were finally able to celebrate Kite Day (Observed) today.  Hooray!
And... there was no wind.  Sigh.  So the kids did a lot of running to get their kites in the air.  We still had fun, though, and stayed out way too late and I'm so tired writing this blog post so I need to make it short and put some pictures on here so I can go to bed because in the morning I've got to deal with kids who didn't get enough sleep so I need to make sure I'm rested enough to deal with it.  Sigh.
O.K.  Pictures of Kite Day Observed:

We were smart this time and wore aquasocks so it wasn't as big a deal when some of the kids got their feet in the water.

By the time we were done, though, we were so worn out.

It was a great family evening.