In the Good Ol' Summertime

This is the first week of summer vacation for all of us, and we are enjoying it!  We got a summer bunny on Saturday.  We have friends whose parents live near a rabbit farm, and for $20, the guy will let you take home a bunny a then return it at the end of the summer.  What a deal!  All the fun, none of the commitment.  So, we have a summer bunny.  I built a hutch for her so she could live outside.  It's a little rustic, but I figured it would do the job.  The netting on the outside was taller than the hutch, and that first night I just bent it down, leaving only a two by 10 inch opening at the top of the cage.  I was awakened at 2:30 a.m. that morning by Nathan, who had turned on the light and was getting dressed.  I asked him what was going on, and he said he'd heard a noise outside, and had looked out the window to see a vulture standing on the top of the cage.  He made a noise and the vulture flew away.  But oh, no, the bunny!  We raced outside only to discover an empty hutch.  I felt so bad -- we had had the bunny for less than a day and the next morning I would have to tell our children it got carried away by a vulture.  So sad.  But then, I peeked way back into the little, upside down plastic bin that I had cut a small door into and put inside the hutch, and in the back, cowering, was the bunny.  Thank goodness, she was alive and unhurt!  I determined that I would have to put a real lid on that hutch the very next day, which I did.  It's not pretty, but I must say, I'm kind of proud of it.  I just hope it will hold against the vultures!  The bunny's name has become Bunster, although today we decided on her official name.  Here it is:

The bunny has kept Eden and Z (but mostly Eden) happily occupied for hours at a time since we got her.  As you can see from this video, anything that she thinks is better than watching TV must be something pretty great!

We also have two tadpoles.  Peter has back legs and Lucy has none.

And we've been getting beautiful birds on the deck!

Yesterday we went to the zoo and Z enjoyed taunting the goose family there.  But he got as good as he gave!

And today the kids played in the creek for over two hours and looked like this when they came out.  Good times!

Springtime and a New Bunny

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

This year Z's class has been performing a series of plays.  Z was cast as the main character in The Lying Shepherd (The Boy Who Cried Wolf).  We worked many weeks memorizing his lines, and he did a great job!

Changing Seasons

Eden's 4th

Eden's 4th birthday was March 25.  We are having a hard time believing she's four, but she is embracing it!  Every day she declares some new thing she can do because she is four!  Today it was opening her own car door from the inside, while still strapped into her car seat.  She'd never been able to reach it before.  When I exclaimed about how big she was, she just looked at me and said, "Mama, I'm four now."  So obvious.

For her birthday we went to the hotel, swam in the pool, had a Frozen birthday cake (like the movie, not like an ice cream cake) and watched hotel TV.  A fine time was had by all, especially the birthday girl!

This picture is at home with the present from Evie and Libby -- balancing ballerinas!  Eden made this tower by herself!

Tracks

A couple of weeks ago when it was still freezing cold, we walked across the frozen river into Iowa.  The river in our back yard is actually the state line, so once you cross over, you're in an Iowa state park called Gitchie Manitou State Park.  It's pretty cool.  We walked back into the woods and the kids made a great fort in an huge tree that had fallen over.  We saw several different animal tracks, which fascinated Eden in particular.  She noticed that each one of us made different tracks because we were all wearing different kinds of boots.  We were back on the beach and Nathan had walked away and around a bend where we couldn't see him, but Eden found his tracks and decided to follow them.  She was so excited when they led us right to him -- success!  On our way back she noticed a different set of tracks and knelt down to get a good look at them.  I asked her whose track they were, and she said,, "They're mine!"  She looked hard at them again, then stood up, scanned the horizon like John Wayne in The Searchers, and muttered to herself, "Where are you, Eden?"

Quotables from Z, Age 7

[While changing his clothes.]  "This scene is rated DL: Don't look."

[In response to the suggestion that he delete some game apps from the Kindle.]  "Why don't you delete some books?"

[In response to most anything, waving his hands.] "Flap-flap."