Peeps Show

Oh goody! The second annual Sunday Source Peeps Diorama Contest at the Washington Post. The above is entitled "Peepadeus". Other scenes include The Tomb of King Peepankhamun, Nightmare in Pink, and the hilarious Peepator Craig's Wide Stance.

do the test

the hunt is on!

Dyeing at Easter

Swan Lake

Manatee Village

Cool, free "village" designed to allow a glimpse into the lives of Florida's early pioneers. The kids had a great time running around and "doing" things in the minimally staffed museum park. First up, climbing all over the wood-burning engine (which had a funky-looking "cabbage head" smokestack to catch all the floating tinder).

Cabbage heads.

The sugar cane press (hook the sweep up to an animal and squish!) and sugar house -- in the brick structure (oven? fireplace?) on the porch is a kettle to boil the juice down to syrup.

Lulu plots a takeover of the spinning stone wheel.

Success!

Hm, this washing machine is different than ours. Where are the buttons?

Adorable little bantams -- the kids spent ages feeding them grass and weeds. We missed our chickens.

Dante drew a picture of the hardly-elusive lizards he's been chasing everywhere in FL.

just swingin in the rain...

Wandering around at the Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City, we were treated to tattoos by a man selling wooden stamps.

heavy liftin

"Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity."

shark's teeth beach

Visit to grandpa in Bradenton, FL day 2: Casperson's Beach to gather fossilized shark's teeth. I understimated the sun, and the kids and Luke got fried and are peeling like mad at present.

Dante underestimates the waves.

Our shark tooth haul.

Back at Grandpa's in the pool.

please release me, let me goooo

We're home from Florida and looking back fondly on last Monday before we left as "Rodent Release Day". First up, Dante caught a squirrel in his havahart trap. The poor thing was chittering mournfully and frantically clawing at the sides, so we released him quickly. But not before we gathered photographic evidence. Didn't get a chance to get this up before we left.



Then it was time to let Ms. Shrew go back home after her vacation in Dante's room. Since we'd found her (or him) down by the coop, we released her back there as well. Except us going to the chicken coop usually means food for the girls, so they all galloped down to see what tasty treats we were offering. I gave them some of the leftover mealworms that we hadn't fed to the shrew, but it didn't stop them from discovering said shrew, chasing it into the coop and cornering (aka pecking) it while it squeaked wildly for help. Dante went in, chased both chickens and shrew out and I distracted the girls with more worms. The poor little thing ran out and hid itself somewhere from both chicken and human eyes.

a new perspective

going up

ta da!!!

Florida here we come!

Kathy and Tom invited us over for pizza Saturday night for one last hurrah before we head to Florida on Tuesday. Can you say cheeeeese?

Guess who's coming to dinner?

I took the kids to the Gem and Mineral show in Meriden on Sunday. I forgot the camera, but we saw all kinds of interesting things, including animals skulls, fossils and petrified wood. They had a corner for the kids to excavate little gems, blobs of copper, and shark's teeth, to pick up things like petrified wood, pumice and something else I can't remember. Luke wasn't feeling well so he stayed home. Hearing a ruckus break out amongst the chickens, he looked outside and saw this:

Looking at our numerous raptor books we have on hand for our DEP survey, we've judged this to be a Cooper's Hawk.

Having missed the silkie it had swooped at, it relocated to a better spot and waited for dinner to be served. Luke ran out to chase it away, but by the time he got downstairs it was gone.