Miscellaneous Fish

I think I'd like to rename March to March Miscellaneous Month.

There's just not a lot of stuff we do in March.

But then again, we're only halfway through the month.

It will continue to get warmer!

I made this awesome pepperoni ring.

I don't usually make it into a ring.

I'm usually too lazy to connect the two halves together.

It looked cool and tasted yummy.

Now that's it's finally warm enough to enjoy longer

adventures outside, we walked the ditch bank.

The water was very still.

It made for perfect reflection shots.

The boys enjoyed climbing up and down the ditch bank.

This is our non-Beta Data.

Our Wal-mart was out of Beta.

We settled on a Black Moor instead.

And his eyes are too big for his head.

(Sorry, I couldn't help it.)

I planned on this fish purchase.

I knew it would be difficult to find a fish in the ditch this early in the spring.

We needed a fish because Nolan has a cool science observation activity.

He is observing the operculum rates as the water temperature is changed.

And in case you are wondering:

The operculum is the flappy thing that covers and protects the gills.

I didn't know what it was either.

Wolf Park

We went to Wolf Park over the weekend with some dear friends.

We learned a lot during this trip.

1. Wolves are very cool.

2. When going to a free open house, go early.  Thankfully we did.

(There was over a mile long line of cars to get into the park when we left.)

3. If going to said open house during the first thaw of spring, wear mud boots.  We did not.

4. Learn how to get your camera to focus on the background, not the fence in the foreground.

We still had a lot of fun.

The weather was full of beautiful sunshine and warmer temperatures!

It's difficult to gauge in the picture just how big these creatures are.

Connor liked these wolves, they were born on his birthday.

This wolf was somewhat cantankerous with the other wolves and was having some alone time.

She was privileged to have coyotes as neighbors.

A few of the coyotes were growling at her.

Besides the wolves and coyotes there are also bison.

There were some foxes as well but somehow we managed to not get pictures of them.

Coyote howling.

The park volunteer had us "howl" to get the coyotes going.

Quite the loud noise! 

Seems strange to see them this close.

You can hear coyotes frequently at the house.

They tend to howl with the train whistles in the middle of the night.

These guys didn't seem too impressed with the hundreds of people watching them.

You think they would have come a little closer to the fence,

or at least turned so we could see their faces.

The park is not very big but has some beautiful views.

This is from the inside the observation deck.

The wolves were showing up for the feeding demonstration.

I suspect they just wanted their meal.

I wasn't too good at remembering the names of the wolves.

I'm sure the kids could tell you.  ;)

It was awfully nice of him to come to the fence so we could get a closer look.

As you can see from the shadows, we were fairly close.

More Miscellaneous and Another Birthday

This is our dog, Sleeping Beauty.

Nolan found her sleeping with her feet propped up on the sliding glass door.

I guess that's why it got so dirty so quickly!

I got a new bread machine for my birthday!

So excited to try it out.

It's a little bigger than my old one.

We call the new machine Big Bertha.

Connor has approved the new bread machine and it's bread.

We got some more snow.

Yay. (Insert a large amount of sarcasm.)

I hope it's the last of it.

Our crazy dog drug her blanket to the front yard again.

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the ability to

drop what you're doing and do something else.

We stopped our studies and watched Israeli Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress.

And of course I had to take a picture.

Dwayne's birthday was this week.

He loves to play chess.

We got him a nice set of chess pieces to go with his wooden board.

He made the chess board in high school and it needed some pieces that fit.

Thankfully the boys love to play chess too!