Tigers at Twlight #19

When Jack and Annie visited the rain forest of India, I knew our field trip #19 would be to a zoo that had tigers and Asian elephants. The National Zoo had almost every animal mentioned in our book minus the one horned rhinoceros. Of course, Mikie's favorite was the elephant:

The python looked just like the one from the book.

They even had an exhibit that allowed him to touch a snake skin.
The tigers were having a lazy afternoon and can barely be seen lying down in the picture behind Mikie.

Mikie learns a little more about the abilities and characteristics of tigers.

I had forgotten that they had a Tiger Tracks trail to teach you all about tigers and preservation efforts. It was perfect for our field trip!

On the tiger tracks trail Mikie learns about the paws and claws of tigers.

We learned that the reason tigers have rough tongues is to help them lap up more water when drinking and for licking all the meat off of animals' bones.

This spinner told of all the dangers a young tiger cub faces in their first year of life.

We were at the zoo for less than 2 hours and HAD to leave because Mikie's allergies were getting really bad. I have both boys on Zyrtec, but this spring the pollen levels are especially high. Mikie's eyes were very itchy and red while Zach's nose wouldn't stop running. And because of this 2 hour field trip, my boys are now both back on nebulizers. We drove to Aditi, an Indian restaurant in Georgetown, for dinner (or in the boys' case...just dessert).

The experience had it's ups and downs...

The ups:

1. There was a plaster elephant head on the wall

2. We ate on the 3rd level of the building

3. The "nan" bread was enjoyed by all

The downs:

1. The bathroom was on the 1st floor and visited often by our boys who were drinking a lot of water to cool their tongues.

2. There was no children's menu or child friendly cups...enough said!

3. The sounds of shrieks, screams, and threats carried down to the second level where everyone else was dinning.

But, I'm sure my boys will tell you that the most memorable moment of the evening was when, after trying several bites of Indian cuisine followed immediately by large gulps of water, we gave in and let them have cheesecake for dinner!

Colin Michael

"It's a boy!" Those were the words I heard on April 14th when Kathy and Mike called to announce the arrival of their third child. I guess I sorta influenced their decision on not finding out the gender of this one. Michael and I are such traditionalists, and there are so few surprises in this world, that we never find out the sex of our babies. I told Kathy how much fun it was not knowing and she convinced her husband to let it be a surprise. They both tell me that they really enjoyed not knowing. The midwife told Kathy that the look on her face when she found out it was a boy was absolutely priceless.

Introducing: Colin Michael born at 3:04 pm 8 lbs 20 inches

Congratulations, Kathy & Mike! Welcome baby Colin!!!!

Easter

Growing up, the Easter tradition in my family was to hollow out eggs by poking a hole in the top and the bottom of an egg and blowing out the insides. Then we decorated them, strung a pipe cleaner through them, and hung them on a branch that was brought in from outside and had been spray painted white. I wanted to carry on this tradition with my own children, but also decided to do a few things differently. We still do the eggs the same way, but each year we go out and pick a branch that has started to blossom with little green buds and use that as our tree. This year, I think we may have picked the branch a little too early (2 weeks before Easter) because by the time Easter morning rolled around our eggs were hanging on a withering branch with brown leaves. Note to self: pick branch on the 9th day before Easter. The other change I made, was to incorporate the Easter Story scripture passages into our egg tree tradition. Each day we remove a slip of paper from one of the plastic eggs numbered 1-8 hanging on the tree and read the chapter of the Bible as indicated on the paper. This really helped Mikie understand the true meaning and miracle of Easter. I'm disappointed that I didn't even get a picture of our egg tree this year or very many good ones of the boys dying their eggs. I guess this was because I did this activity while Michael was on a trip and I had to juggle taking pictures, all the while trying to keep my boys from dying the surrounding area with brightly colored water. Thanks to a box of egg wrappers we had a sports themed tree this year. The boys even used a white crayon to make their own divots on an egg and dyed it, turning it into a golf ball.

We were invited to a friend's house for an egg hunt as well as games, crafts, and Easter themed food. Zachary had to find all the yellow eggs with blue dots and Mikie had to find eggs with numbers 1-11. I thought Mikie might try to find them in numerical order, but he didn't. He just picked up whichever one he needed next and kept track of it all in his head (even though Bridgette had given them a cross off sheet).

I made an altered version of Italian Easter bread. It called for aniseed and chopped candied fruit. Instead, I substituted cranberries and almonds. It took three tries for me to make this. I used the other two messed up batches to create bread bunnies for the kids. And even then, it turned out very dry tasting and the eggs weren't fully cooked hard all the way through. But hey, it looks pretty, right?

EASTER MORNING

I forgot to take pictures of the boys' Easter baskets before they dug into them so here are the contents spread out.

Every year the boys get a new lamb in their baskets to remind them that Jesus is the Lamb of God. I knew Zach would love his because he still carries around the one he got last year. You can see that this was his favorite Easter gift (it even ranked higher than monster trucks!) When I attended Family Bible Church in Whidbey, a group of moms talked about their tradition of making "resurrection baskets" for their children. The idea is that everything in the basket represented the story of Easter or the life of Jesus in some way. Since then, I've tried to make our Easter baskets as relative to the holiday as I possibly could while still getting them the things I know they will enjoy. Here's a video telling about each symbol:

After breakfast was over and they were dressed in their Easter outfits, it was time for the egg hunt. I was expecting the worst...you know...pushing, shoving, scrambling, fussing, crying, and screaming; but, what I got was my very own Easter miracle. Mikie is of course faster at finding eggs but when he saw that Zachary didn't have as much in his basket he poured some into his brothers' willingly. And in the video below you'll see some scrambling and snatching going on, but again Mikie helped Zachary find a few eggs:

It's a great day when you can eat candy before 9:00 a.m. Video below:



Of course, Boagie and Grandpa sent Easter gifts too. Video:

After church, we drove up to Annapolis and had Easter dinner with Michael's family.

Mikie hasn't quite figured out how to properly climb Aunt June's trees.

Zachary stopped to smell the flowers.

I wonder how many more Easters I will spend looking longingly at all the little girl's in their frilly Easter dresses before I finally get to dress someone other than myself in a skirt?

Jesus said, "This is what is written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Luke 24: 46-47

An expensive afternoon!

A few days before Easter, we drove up to D.C. and picked Michael up from work to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival around the tidal basin. Michael had a momentary lapse in judgement and decided we should drive downtown and park instead of taking the metro. That's a mistake we will NEVER make again! After driving around for 45 minutes, we finally found a parking spot along Constitution Ave. We spent a glorious afternoon walking around taking pictures with the trees and enjoying the warm weather.


Here's a video:

The boys loved all the water fountains at the memorials.

On the very last stretch of the circular path (and still a good walk from the van) our stroller wheel finally popped off. I knew it was only a matter of time before it broke, and so that is a great excuse to have to buy another stroller. But, this was only part of the reason I titled this post "an expensive afternoon".........

Upon returning to our car, we received a hefty $100 parking violation. We read the parking sign "2 hour parking 10 am to 4 pm" and then reread it and completely thought we were safe because it was soon to be "after 4:00." What we failed to understand was the sign above that one that read "No standing 4pm-8am" (or something like that). We were in fact, lucky that we returned when we did because, after closer inspection of the ticket, we realized that it also said "requested to be towed."

The price of 1 broken stroller = $250

The price of buying a new stroller = $400

The price of parking in the wrong spot = $100

Spending the day with my family under pink trees = Priceless!

Field Trip # 18 Buffalo & Indians

This was another field trip that I had to turn into more than one day/location. The book Mikie read was Buffalo Before Breakfast so we started out visiting a buffalo ranch in Culpepper about an hour from our house. They allow you to do a self guided walking tour of their ranch where, besides the buffalo, we also saw chickens, pigs, turkeys, and a cow. They each found a stump to pose on with the buffalo behind them.

It was a little bright, but also a little chilly on March 27th.

The buffalo herd.

Both of my boys were very fond of Daisy the jersey cow. I was a little shocked that Mikie even let her lick his hand and didn't complain.

Inside the trading post, Mikie was able to touch a buffalo hide (dark one on bottom) and a baby buffalo hide (orange one on top). We examined the skulls and then purchased some buffalo meat including buffalo hotdogs and a buffalo jerky stick that Mikie loves.

Part two of our field trip was to the National Museum of American Indians in D.C.

I was disappointed that there weren't more life sized dioramas but we did see a lot of artifacts and these examples of tee pees.

There were a few statues.

Mikie by the moccasins.

The highlight was finding an exhibit about the Lakota tribe which was the tribe that our book centered on.

In the upper left corner you can see the Lakota tribe name.
The exhibit was laid out to represent their ceremonial circle with the 4 different colors symbolizing the 4 stages of life:

Stage: Elders

Stage: Adulthood

Stage: Youth

Stage: Infancy

To finish our field trip, we at ate Ted's Montana Grill and had Buffalo burgers.

By Mikie's request, we sat at the table under the buffalo head.

I would have loved to have taken him to a Pow-Wow, but there aren't any scheduled around here until the summer. I just may turn this into a four part field trip. :)