Winter Festival

Last weekend, we went to another winter festival. This one was centered around ice fishing and outdoor sports. It took place in a local state park. There were hikes to point out animal tracks and owl calling hikes and snowsnake races and dogsleds!

The main reason we went to see an Owl Show. These are birds that have been rescued. Aaron really likes owls and he loved the show. I believe that this is a small screech owl.

This is a Horned Owl. I think. I guess I should have Aaron helping me with this blog.

This is a Barred owl. This is the kind of owl that my dh saw when he was bow hunting this past fall. It came up silently and sat on a branch about 10 feet away, watched the riverbank for a while, and then left as silently as it had come.

And this is a Snowy Owl. I didn't know we got Snowy Owls around here but apparently this is the southern part of their range.

Tapping Trees

We tapped our trees today. It seems a little early but we've missed some good sap weather this week already. We added some new trees and double tapped some of our best producers. We name all the trees for fun and to keep track of which trees produce well.

We now have two Star Wars names. Personally I wonder why it took this long. So behold the tree Kashyyyk (where Chewbacca is from)....

... and next to it, Corellia (where Han Solo is from - of course).

Ice Festival

Several of our church families went to a local Snow and Ice Festival. There were professional scow sculptors and local teams that competed.

This amazing ice sculpture had been started at 9 am that morning! And we saw it at 2 pm.

This was my favorite one.

They had a petting zoo there also....

... complete with camels! I wonder how they liked the cold?

This is a cool kaleidoscope that looks down into the flowers.

The happy crew, minus the moms taking the pictures.

Wounded Warrior Project

A group of our friends got together and worked on a Wounded Warrior project. We made pillowcases and fleece blankets for wounded soldiers that are in the hospital.

Amazingly we only found 3 pins in the carpet afterwards and none of them got into my dh's feet (which is the usual case with pins).

Everyone liked making the fleece blankets but they were also surprised by how much time it took to make all those cuts and tie all the ties.

Children's Musuem

We went to a local Children's Museum with our homeschool group. They have a great water table.

The children just love going under the dome...

... and getting someone to pour water over them.

They had an air table...

... arch blocks, ...

... fun bubbles, ...

... a ball conveyor belt that dumps balls on people, ...

... and a parachute!

As you can see, we had a great morning there.

GeoBee

This year Nathan and Stephen again participated in our local Geography Bee.

They both did well and advanced to the final round.

Stephen did very well and advanced to the Championship Round. He came in second behind our friend Jake.

Glass in the Garden

Our local botanical garden is featuring 25 glass pieces this winter. They had two weekends where you could come walk the garden by luminaries and look at the glass sculptures lit up at night. It was a so fun to see the sculptures by night. This one was called Topiary.

This one was Wysteria and is my second favorite (behind the weeping birch one seen earlier in my blog).

This one was in the conservatory and was very warm - thus the fogging up of my camera and my glasses. But the children thought this shot was cool.

Here's what it looked like a little while longer.

I think this one was called "Falling Leaves".

This one was "Gift, Blue".

Burn, Baby, Burn

This past weekend was a perfect time to burn our brush pile. There was snow on the ground and it wasn't very windy and we had time to watch it. We figure that this is about 5 or 6 years worth of brush/broken picnic table benches/old boards to burn.

It really put out the heat when it got going. Those 5 years of dead Christmas trees really burn hot and fast.

Like the matching coveralls?

After 24 hours, it was reduced to a couple of smoldering stumps. Ready for more brush!