Well, summer is here (I know, not
technically) and it's time to get outside.
The Boy Scouts were camping last weekend and we were so excited that Nick felt up to going out for one of the nights. They worked on an improvement project at a nearby nature center, went canoeing, and then had a good ol' campout. There was a certain Cub Scout who couldn't stand missing out on the action and since he has some pull with the Scout Master, was able to wrangle his way into the campout. Here they are waking up early in the morning.
And two Scouts packing up.
Being outside comes with some opportunities to study God's creation (if you think of it that way, Gina, it won't be as gross...).
One morning after a rain we woke up and found hundreds, if not thousands, of little brown balls in the pool. Now, since we've had a fire in the fire pit many nights we had a pretty good idea what they were. We've heard lots of telltale signs of froggy activity and have seen the little guys hanging out enjoying the "cement pond" often.
Still, these things looked a little different than any tadpole eggs I'd seen before.
So we decided to scoop a couple hundred out and sent the rest through the skimmer. Put them in a bucket of water and, low and behold, the next morning, this is what we found:
Today, several days later, our little froggy babies have grown and so far are enjoying their new surroundings.
One afternoon when I came home I heard a strange chattering in the tree in the front yard. I glanced over and peeking out of a hole in the tree was a little tiny black-and-white striped face. He ducked back in quickly but the boys and I sat out there for a while watching them squirm around inside. We didn't get too close but took lots of peeks throughout the day. When Dave got home from work the momma was climbing up the tree. She was none to happy to have the papparazi around her babies and spread out as far as she could over the hole. She stayed perfectly still the entire time we were out there.
 |
| "move along, nothing to see here...." |
Angelina has nothing on this Mama--she wasn't letting us get a single glimpse of her precious celebrity babies. We'll be definitely giving them room. And I'm glad the boys got the heavy duty trash can with the locking lid last year...
The boys saved a toad from the pool this afternoon; Lily brought us what she thought was a dead lizard, but it escaped when she dropped it. And 3 foxes ran across the road in front of the van the other night.
It's like living in the zoo around here....
