Showing posts with label beach combing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beach combing. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Things That Make Me Happy

Top of the list has to be the wonderful spring weather! Sun! Yes!

Yesterday we went to the park and went beach combing after dropping off our quarterly homeschool paperwork at the school district. Mikro had a blast. His new thing (which he gets from his nutty artist mother...) is collecting pieces of driftwood that remind him of animals. Yesterday we decided to turn this obsession of ours into a piece of nature art, ala Andy Goldsworthy, and we made a blue heron out of driftwood and left it on the beach.





Among our Hudson River treasures was some charcoal from a bonfire on the beach. I told Mikro that we could use it to draw, and he went right to it. This is a mayfly:



And here is my portrait (no reference but the picture in my head) of Kev:



It was a gorgeous day, and we took a long birding walk. Saw American Kestrels, robins, house finch, tufted titmouse, and coolest, since it was new to us, a northern flicker. Also had fun watching the kite surfers.



Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Beachy Birthday Fun

Yesterday was Mikro's big day, and once again my spine refused to get with the plan, so we bagged our field trip, and headed to our local park. Kev took the day off, and in what is becoming a birthday tradition, he and Mikro had a foam sword fight on the beach. We did some birthday beach combing, complete with gifts from Old Father Hudson. (We found a crayfish fishing lure and a raptor claw shaped bit of sea glass, which are likely to become necklaces for Mikro.) Afterward, we tried to find the resident (but elusive) owl population. (We could hear them, but the foliage was thick enough that we couldn't catch sight of them...) On a rain-in-the-forecast Monday morning, we had the park nearly to ourselves.





At home, we played some board games. Stixx is fast becoming a Mikro favorite.

Mikro was in an experimental mood this week, so I picked up spaghetti squash (which we had never tried before) for dinner. Silly me, the squash was too big for any pot we own. That made for adventures in the kitchen, as did our as yet unsuccessful quest for the beaters for my hand mixer, which Kev washed and put away (perhaps in an alternate dimension) after my last foray into Gluten Free baking... So, plans for a dinosaur cake on indefinite hold till the appliances cooperate, we once again indulged in the ridiculously rich and delicious vegan and GF fudge that Mikro adores, this time with candles.



At bedtime, I got a huge hug and was told that he had a great birthday (and he really wanted to stay up till midnight, to see it through to the very end, but we chased him upstairs anyway...) Since the schools are off this week for spring break, and it is Mikro's considered opinion that his birthday deserves at least that prolonged a celebration, I'm letting him slack off a little on academics, in favor of playing with the birthday loot. He's already into the LEGOs, and is hatching plans with his dad for a robot building project...