Beadsession

Let me tell you about my new obsession. Beads! Not just any beads, but seed beads for my new bead loom, which I got for Christmas. I'm obsessed, I tell you. It is way too much fun to be healthy.

Spring's first "Hello"

Spring has arrived...sort of. The primroses are showing their colors, the crocuses are glorious, the robins are out in force, and once in a while we get a day warm enough to go out barefoot and enjoy the sunny, springy atmosphere. But we still seem to wake up to a handful of snow on the ground most mornings. I came down the stairs on the first really snowy morning after our really springy weather and asked Grandpa if spring had given up on us. He laughed and reassured me that it was just a spring snow. Sure enough, it had all disappeared by noon.

Grandma and Grandpa used to have a lot of birds here on the "bird farm". They rehabilitated swans, geese, ducks, eagles, and others. They also raised chickens and ducks and such. The trees have now grown up enough that the eagles find them the perfect perches from which to swoop down and prey on the poor domesticated waterfowl and poultry. There haven't been birds here for several years. But Grandma misses having them so much she just decided one day to go out and buy herself some baby ducks, and hope that they will survive the eagles.

They're darn cute little things. Three girls and a boy.

Blueberry blossoms in the yard.

Here's the sapsucker that likes to come over most mornings and bang on the ladder up to Mom's old bedroom window for an hour or so. He may be trying to attract a mate, or maybe he's just making a fool of himself, we really don't know. He is quite handsome though, despite all the banging.



Spring sunshine and the swing!

Crocuses.

The barely blooming primroses.

The Working Caterpillar

The Saturday before Easter the book store had an event. We were graciously visited by Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar himself! It was quite exciting, and the children only found the very large and very hungry caterpillar a little scary... when they weren't petting him.

The caterpillar wasn't the only exciting thing in the store that day. Cindy read the book about 7 times in one corner while Danny gave out juice and cookies. I manned the craft table where kids could make their own gourmet caterpillar snack, complete with fuzzy caterpillar buddy!