Spring Valley

 With spring here and every day becoming a little warmer, it's been fun to explore some new natural areas close to home. Today we ventured to Spring Valley which I had never even heard of until a couple of days ago. This was something new for all four of us. Score! Our first stop was in the nature center which was  stocked with a small nature oriented library and games. The kids enjoyed a large aquarium with indigenous fish as well as a box turtle habitat where we found turtles sunning themselves on rocks and swimming in their small rock pond. Spring Valley is a natural refuge that calls itself an "outdoor living museum." At first glance you might not expect much in the wildlife department with the nearly bare trees, brown grass and the fact that it's located in the middle of a large suburb. Also, yesterday there was a controlled burn so large chunks of the preserve were blackened. However, I quickly learned I was wrong upon walking into the area and coming across a wide variety of birds including red-winged blackbirds, chickadees, mallard ducks, Canada geese and woodpeckers. While walking on one of the trails I heard some noises underfoot just in time to see a garter snake slithering into the grass. Even the charred ground was now covered with robins looking for earthworms. During our little jaunt out on the trails, I found out Fran had never seen a woodpecker in the wild. Another first! We were just raking in the newness today.

Big Ole Roll of Paper

 This morning when the kids were arguing over which cartoon to watch, I remembered a cool idea that Lilia discovered while Franky was getting his hair cut last week. A large piece of  paper had been hung down the wall and there were crayons attached on strings. This was for the  customers (or bored siblings) to color while waiting. I have several large rolls of paper  and they mostly sit behind a desk and gather dust. Lilia has used them to color before, but got frustrated with having to keep the paper from rolling up on itself. So, I simply taped a large piece of paper on two doors for each kid to use as their own canvas. End fighting over cartoons, enter time for artwork! Franky was pretty excited about being able to use Lilia's stamp collection and Christmas stickers which he promptly stuck on his paper. Lilia, however, took her time to plan her "project" and ended up drawing a picture of the two of us. Sounds simple, but there's something exciting about being able to have a fresh sheet of floor to (almost) ceiling paper set up just for yourself. Not bad for some Saturday morning fun.

Caterpillars

Say hello to our little friends! Last spring I student taught first graders and had a lot of success with my butterfly unit. Last year I ordered about 30 caterpillars from Carolina Biological, but to do this at home, I figured five would suffice (although they sent me 6!). I have a butterfly sanctuary, which is like a mesh basket, where these little guys will be transferred once they each form a chrysalis. Until then, they will hang out and eat (the yellowish stuff on the bottom is their food) until they get big and fuzzy. The look on Franky's face was priceless this morning when I took them out of their box. He's used to deliveries that involve mostly books so he was pretty excited to see actual live caterpillars. So far, the kids have checked on them a minimum of 10 times to see if they've gotten bigger. In honor of our guests, we're going to revisit one of our favorite books, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. Below is an excellent video of the author reading the book himself.

You can also find several fascinating videos of this gifted author discussing his childhood and demonstrating how he creates his masterpieces on the Penguin website. In case you haven't guessed, I adore Eric Carle. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to settle a very important caterpillar dispute.

Origami

We set off on our origami experience with high expectations. We had  200 sheets of origami paper in every color you could imagine. I suggested making a crane first, but Lilia and Franky were thinking along the lines of tortoise and panda. No, how about a dinosaur!? We made hearts. Turns out, origami is not so easy, at least for someone like myself. I should have remembered the fear I experienced in math class trying to fold papers into shapes and fraction strips. All of my classmates would effortlessly fold those tiny papers the correct way while I sweated and tried to copy off of the person next to me. So yeah, that person tried origami today. The hearts actually turned out to be fun once we got the hang of it. Even Franky sat patiently as I helped him fold his. Lilia decided they would be great Valentines and wrote "I love you" on hers. I'll have to keep that in mind for next year. You can make your own hearts by following the directions here. We still have plenty of paper, so my next goal is to make a dinosaur eating a tortoise while chasing a panda. Stay tuned.

Lychee, Tamarind and Grass Jelly

Today we decided to taste test some drinks bought at our local market. Neither Franky, nor Lilia or I had ever tried any of these beverages which included lychee drink, tamarind juice and grass jelly drink. I've never actually tried a lychee, but I've seen it as a basket item on Chopped so I'm pretty sure that counts as being familiar with it. Tamarind juice is one of my father-in-law's favorite drinks and it's sold at many grocery stores and all of the local Mexican restaurants. However, when it comes to Mexican drinks, I'm more partial to horchata or Tequila so tamarind juice has not been on my radar. The strangest sounding drink was grass jelly. I was really interested in tasting this one and didn't realize it literally had jelly-like pieces in it. The flavor was pretty tasty and similar to Thai tea, but as someone who does not like Jell-0, I couldn't handle the little floaty bits. Lychee drink was very sweet and the overall winner with Lilia and Franky. (In fact, she was caught red handed drinking Franky's share once he turned his head.) Tamarind was sweet, but with a stronger flavor and was my overall pick. To that I say, move over horchata!

The Magic of Mason Jars

I might as well be queen of the plastic baggie. That would be sandwich, quart or gallon size, preferably with a zipper. Organizing is definitely not my strong suit. If I can fit something in a plastic bag, that's where it goes and that's where it stays. We just got back from visiting my in-laws in tiny Zapata, TX where Lilia collected  rocks and shells from nearby Falcon Lake. Where were they? Plastic bag. Last year she collected some interesting stones from Ft. Sheridan and Rosewood Beach on Lake Michigan. Where were they? Plastic bag. I was determined to relieve these pretty shells and stones from their bags and decided to purchase some Mason jars at the local craft store. Lilia picked out butterfly adorned sticky labels and went to work. Not only did she start two rock collection jars, she decided to get two different types of beads which were currently in...well, I'll let you guess that one. She and Franky did some transfers and voila! Environmentally friendly and quite pretty if I do say so myself.

Dragon Fruit

Usually when I'm at the grocery store, I pride myself on getting through quickly. Probably because for the last 6 1/2 years I've been shopping with at least one small child and any whining and dragging of the feet or screaming for "that candy bar!!" has caused me to run through the aisles in my own version of supermarket sweepstakes. Okay, not that my angels would ever behave like that. I'm talking about all of the other kids in the store. Ahem, moving on, I decided we should take our time to look around and try at least one new fruit today, and alas, we ended up with the dragon fruit. Now, I'm pretty sure I've had some borderline fruit infused drinks that have claimed to contain dragon fruit. However, I've never actually bought and eaten the stuff myself. In fact, I actually Googled what do with this mysterious looking guy. Turns out, you just have to cut it in half and scoop the goodness out. Lilia loved it and said it tasted like kiwi. I would add that it tasted like a kiwi and a pear had an eccentric love child. Franky was hesitant and requested that I "take the seeds out." Yeah, if you look at the picture above you will see that that isn't happening. He ended up eating it and all in all, we give it a thumbs up.