Watching them grow up.

Our little barn swallows are almost ready to leave the nest. If you're very quiet when you walk into the garage, you'll see this.

If you're not quiet, you'll get this.

One of 'em's a coward.

They are *so* close to leaving the nest (compare this picture to the same birds last week) that I sat down to try to get some good pictures. My goal was to get a picture of their parents feeding them, but I had a bit too much help for that to happen.

I was able to get this ...

and this ...

and this.

When I came back out by myself a few hours later, the nest was empty. And so it goes.

The sickies.

Poor Gray. He has the sickies. He spent most of his day in some variation of this position.

I wish I could do that when I was sick. Curl up and get comfort from someone I trust completely.

Between that and the hot, hot weather that drives us indoors, the girls have been discovering new computer games. Zoombinis was a surprise hit with Ainsley,

while Hannah explored JumpStart, Seymour Skinless, and Reading Eggs.

There's also been a lot of reading, cuddling, plays, pretend, and a game Hannah made up in the car today where she starts a story and we take turns adding to it (when it was Ainsley's turn, she had the main character boiling cheese, flowers, and grapes for lunch - she almost got herself kicked out of the storytelling, but saved herself by giggling so hysterically that Hannah didn't have the heart).

In the morning and evening we do our outside chores and get any outside playing in that we can, including the pony rides. Once the temperature soars to the high 90s and even to 100, I try to keep my redhead inside, which means I have to keep all of the kids in. This afternoon, she had too much energy, so we went to the garage and inspected our barn swallow friends.


Their chests are starting to turn brownish today - they were gray yesterday. It's startling how fast these little creatures grow up.

So we're staying busy, and our summer's flying by.

Errand day.

Today was designated as 'errand day'. You have to have a designated errand day when you live in the country. A day that is filled to the brim with hitting all of the stores 'in town' that you need to hit which takes strategic food/drink/entertainment/allowable treats planning on my part. It's an art and I'm a struggling artist.

It went more smoothly than I thought it would. After the first store we stopped and had a picnic at a really pretty cemetery. Did you know that cemeteries used to be the happenin' place for locals to gather and mingle over picnic lunches? That's just a little historical trivia for you. We go to cemeteries because Hannah absolutely loves reading the stones, finding out how old the people were, and imagining their lives. Sometimes crying over ones she finds especially touching. Her imagination and storytelling go into overdrive at a cemetery.

After lunch, we went to Shannon's Hair Dressing Emporium for Fairies and Princesses and Ainsley got her hair 'finished'. I'm sure some of you noticed her hair in this picture yesterday.


She thought it was time for a new hairstyle. When I asked her why she'd done it (she'd cut off most of the hair in the back of her head - a new one for me), she said "Me look pitty. Me cut off hair, look pitty, now nobody decognize me."

So Shannon did what she could, while reassuring Ains that she wasn't 'fixing' her hair, she was just 'finishing' it for her.

I tried to get a picture of it, but the girl rarely holds still.

It's short - very short - and it accentuates how similar she is to her daddy, but it still is not short enough to cover all of the 'damage'.

Shannon asked "Were you mad?" No, hair doesn't really bother me. If you experiment and it doesn't work, the hair will grow out or grow back or you can cut it again or dye it another color.

Once we'd finished the haircut it was time for my least favorite store to enter with kids - The WalMarts.

After thirty minutes of going up and down aisles, simultaneously trying to check things off my list and keep Grayson from throwing everything from the cart onto the floor, we got done and went to the checkout line. After thirty seconds of loading the contents of the cart onto the belt I realized that Grayson, king of unloading and loading, would happily do it for me so I stuck him in the back of the cart and set him to work.


It was a beautiful thing. For thirty seconds. Then he started throwing them out the other side of the cart onto the floor.

Meanwhile, the cashier saw the toilet brush that Gray had put on the belt and said to the girls "You're getting a toilet wand?" All Ainsley heard was 'wand'. Wand wand wand wand WAND!!! Wand. And so it was that the first Toilet Fairy was born.

I informed her when we got home that she was now the Toilet Fairy and as such was in charge of Toilet Scrubbing and General Bathroom Cleanliness. She informed me that "Me not Toilet Fairy! Me not scrub toilet or .... what you say, mommy?" General Bathroom Cleanliness. "Me not DO DAT!!! Me just fairy with wand." And off she danced.

After WalMart we met with our real estate agent, who I am more in love with every day (if all goes well, we are signing some Very Important Papers tomorrow), went grocery shopping, and bought chicken feed.

When we got home, the pool had warmed up nicely, so there was pool play - it's a daily occurence with this bigger pool.

View from outside the pool:

View from inside the pool:

While we were goofing off in the pool, Matt was mowing the lawn. He stopped the lawn mower right before he was going to run over this little guy:

Remember me telling you how cute these little buggers are (he's a baby Killdeer)? Oh, they're cute.

He found the momma (with a broken wing, natch) in the garden and set the baby down close enough for them to find each other. Ten seconds later, the momma's wing was healed and she had all of her babies herded to safety. I really need to do something about those weeds.

The house won't get cleaned tomorrow - we have plans.

The dry run. Hiking-wise.

The kids and I went on a 'dry run' for our summer hiking today. What does that mean? That means we went with friends who could help me out if I'd overpacked or overlooked something or overestimated hiking ability of littles. It went wonderfully.

The hike we chose (out of Hiking Idaho) was a bit ambitious for a five-year-old and two two-and-a-half year olds, but not by much. It was a bit over two miles, but we covered that slowly. The terrain was not flat, but that added interest more than being too physically difficult. If I had remembered jackets for my girls, the wind wouldn't have affected them, and that would have helped.

We met up with our friends at a scenic overlook by the Snake River. Stunning view. Made scared-of-heights-li'l-ol-me lose my equilibrium just looking through the seven foot tall chain link guard fence, but my girls loved it.
That is a deep canyon.

When we got to the trail head, I got all situated with Gray on my back and a waist backpack (I will *not* say that I wore a fanny pack) on under his bum. That carried a first-aid kit, water bottles, snacks, bird and flower identification pamphlets, a map, diaper change kit, bug spray, pocketknife, a compass, and my car key. Next time, when we're on our own, I'll actually be carrying more - a little sketchbook and pencils so that the girls will have an excuse to sit down and relax along the trail, a magnifying glass, jackets for the kids.

We started up the trail with the kids predictably running off their excitement for the first few hundred yards. The first mile or so of the trail was lodgepole pine, absolutely beautiful and I can't believe that I got no clear pictures of it. Next time.

The girls all found walking sticks. Bella just used hers like a divining rod - it found every puddle of water in or around the trail, Ains used hers as a sword (of course), and Hannah carried hers for a lot longer than any of us expected just in case she ran into a giant who needed a walking stick.
I'm going to try to find a mushroom identification book for the next time we travel this trail - so many different kinds of mushrooms in the pine tree section of the trail. Ains was excited about all the fairy houses and Hannah was so intrigued by the different places they grew, the different sizes and shapes ... I wish I knew how to take close-up pictures of these things.

After we got out of the pines, we passed through a meadow.
I expected the meadow to be much smaller than it was - and much warmer. The wind blowing across the top of the mountain was cold. It also passed right by a Boy Scout camp where we were almost run into by five scouts who shouted frantically "HAVE YOU SEEN A FLAG????" Um, no. And that's cheating. Keep looking.

I heard Jo singing "Climb Every Mountain" and turned around to see this -
I like having friends who will unselfconsciously belt out fitting songs from musicals.

After the meadow, we descended into a section of the trail populated by Quaking Aspens. Cottonwoods? I don't know their appropriate name, but they were pretty. Hannah told her daddy that her favorite part of the hike was 'the trees singing when we left the meadow.'

We saw lots of these on the Quaking Aspens and on the trees dotting the entrance and exit to the meadow. Lots and lots of these little caterpillars just emerging from their egg sack.
Ainsley learned the fine art of becoming interested in anything and everything when she needed to slow down.
Then she recruited Bella to discuss her findings.
After we'd crossed through the Quaking Aspen section...
we crossed back into Lodgepole pine, and then to our cars. In the last section, Ains and I got ahead of the rest of the group and immediately were rewarded with lots of bird sightings. Ruffled Grouse, Pileated Woodpeckers, as-of-yet-unidentified birds that are captured in blurry images on my camera. It was exciting. And she saw three Bald Eagles. With red breasts, eating worms, natch.

Back at the trail head, we busted out a honeydew melon. (The amazing part of this photo is Grayson - not on my lap. He loved Reese.)
Then our friends left and we stayed at the picnic site for a bit longer, playing and chatting. Gray looks so grown-up.
I found these little pamphlets somewhere ... Barnes and Noble maybe? ... and grabbed them for just such a journey. Lightweight and laminated, made to be handled outdoors and by little hands.
I came back from taking Gray and our stuff a few yards down to the car to see this - Hannah trying to find the birds she'd seen (Ains told Hannah she'd seen a Macaw in the forest and Hannah couldn't find it in the pamphlet - go figure.) and Ains at the other end of the table, staring at the yellow flowers (Heart Leaved Arnica, we discovered), trying to locate them in the flower pamphlet. It was endearing, this sight.
So that was our first hiking trip of the summer, and it was a huge success. I learned that I was doing a lot of stuff right, that I forgot some stuff, that going by ourselves will have some perks (not keeping to someone else's schedule), that going with friends has its perks (I laughed really hard and my girls adore Bella), and that it is nice, even when you live in the country, to get out in wild nature. It feeds the soul.

I think this has been my longest post ever. And I've paid for it dearly. Cygnus crashed at my feet about five minutes after I started downloading the pictures (which takes forever, Photobucket) and has been cheerily farting up a storm the entire time. Maybe he's frustrated that we didn't take him with us. Three kids was enough for me on my first trip out. Maybe next time.

More birding...

The book goes with us everywhere now. It's wonderful, really, to connect with a part of the world that you've taken for granted before, that you've allowed to flit around in your peripheral vision but never really notice. And it's wonderful to watch your little girls doing the same thing.

We see birds. Everywhere. So the book comes with us everywhere.

In Wyoming at Grandma and Poppa's house, we see birds more anxious for spring than even we are.

Sandhill Cranes.
Canada Geese.
Robin.
Crossing our driveway in front of our car, Hannah squeals to stop because she's seen a 'new bird'. A Killdeer. That one's fun to talk about.

In a nearby farmer's fields that are being flood-irrigated, we chance on two more varieties.

Mallard ducks.
Spotted Sandpiper? Closest we could find in the book.

Then we go to 'the big city' and see a House Sparrow in front of the toy store.


We're still in the crush phase of this obsession. We're still easily identifying and finding new birds. We have yet to hit the 'I know all the common birds and we'll *never* find the other birds' hump. Right now it's pure excitement every time we see a bird. And that's fun.

I would love to have an experience like this with my girls. Having a birding mentor would be wonderful.

How we got started.

Other birds we've seen.

Today we...

ran ourselves ragged having fun.

We're supposed to get another bout of colder weather in a few days, so we're making the most of this warm spell.

First things first, fill up the pool so that the cold well water will be warm by afternoon.

(Please don't tell her that's not a pool. I think Hannah's figured it out, but Ains is still thrilled with her little 'pool'.)

Hannah and I stopped to look at birds in our huge pine tree.

House Finch.
European Starling. (This is really a European bird. It was introduced to NYC in the late 1800s and spread over the country from there. Very aggressive, dominating bird. Aren't field guides great?)
I think this is a Chipping Sparrow, though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. It doesn't match the description of any of the chickadees in the field guide, but it doesn't have obvious white eyebrows as Chipping Sparrows do, either...


Ains thought we were boring, so she went and got 'Oreo', the kitten that Hannah and she are trying to convince their father needs to become a house cat.


Then the girls went to check on the new babies, Katrina and Karl.
We said hello to the pony...

and then went back to the house. While I worked on packing boxes in the bunkhouse, the kids played outside.


As I said, Hannah seems to think our 'pool' is boring (can't imagine why), so she went to go see if the irrigation canal had water yet. No luck.


But look what we did find...


The canal headgate has lots of these little creatures swimming around when the canal's full of water. We've never thought to look for their shells when it was dried up, but today we did. They're now on our Very Precious Things table.


I love how both of Ains' feet are off the ground in this picture.

Then lunch on the porch for some, naps for others, reading 'Pippi WalkingStocking' (Ains' title), playing with the 'new' toys discovered while reorganizing boxes, watching the hippo and dog sing 'In the Jungle' on YouTube, dancing, and eating oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies.

Hannah and I worked on a really fun letter project which I'll post later while Ains followed us around with the pony's halter saying 'Ride Pincess! Ride PINcess. RIDE PINCESSSSS!' Grayson thought her hilarious, which made her think she was, in fact, hilarious, so she amped it up for him. She was, in fact, hilarious.

When Daddy got home, it was pony-riding time. Hannah worked on controlling the reins...

while Ains worked on leading. (That rope is headed right over to my hand. I was 'just holding it off the ground' for my independent little girl who would have not appreciated me holding it to help her keep the pony on the straight and narrow.)

We went for an hour long ride (good exercise for us leaders), then home again, home again, jiggety-jig, dinner, and both girls passed out on the couches while watching Island Princess karaoke.

We done good.