Catching Our Breath From A Busy Weekend

We've had a very busy few days.

Friday - Nicholas went to a Valentine's Day party at a friend's house. I wish I planned ahead enough to do parties like that. When I was Nicholas' age, my mom would throw a party for me and my friends for just about every holiday. She was great at that - I am not. But at least Nicholas gets to go to parties at other children's houses! Friday night, we had dinner at a friend's house with our Bible study group. Nicholas loves going over there to play with all the other kids while the mommies and daddies talk downstairs.

Saturday - Nicholas helped Stuart work on installing our new back door. They both love working with tools and Nicholas loves doing anything that Stuart does. I'm so glad that they have such a great bond between them. Stuart loves teachable moments with Nicholas. He even let him use a pry bar to pull off the trim around the old door.





Stuart was amazed to find that our old door was attached to the house by only 2 nails! And there was no insulation around the door. So much for quality craftsmanship. But no worries now. Stuart has done an excellent job on the new door (thanks to some of his tool birthday presents he just got).



Saturday night - we went to church then to a surprise birthday party for a friend of mine that I worked with before Nicholas was born. The party was at Alforno's restaurant so Nicholas was automatically going to have a great time because he loves going out to eat at restaurants (What does that say about my cooking??!). Nicholas had even more fun than expected because he got to sit next to another little boy who is also 3 years old. They played with their little toys and talked the whole time. It's neat how kids can become instant friends if one of them has a toy car with them. And of course, Nicholas loved having birthday cake and taking the extra balloons home with him.

Sunday - we spent time wandering around a nearby park. We found some animal tracks that we think were from a raccoon. Nicholas was so cute! He grabbed his notebook and pen from our backpack and started drawing the footprint in his notebook. I've talked to him in the past about starting a nature journal to keep track of all the neat things we see outside. I guess he's decided to start one!





Daddy found a little green bug that he showed to Nicholas. Nicholas, smart boy that he is, suggested that we look in our insect field guide to see what kind of bug it is. I was so proud! Yet, for some reason I never pulled the book out of the back pack. We looked it up later and learned that we were playing with a green stink bug! Eeww! Fortunately, none of us got "stinked".



We stopped for a while to have our picnic lunch. I sneaked in a picture with my boys saying the blessing. Sorry, God! I just couldn't resist.



While we were eating we watched this worm crawl around under our table. We tried to pick it up and let it crawl around on our hands but it wasn't very good at holding on. It kept rolling off our hands!



We wandered along some more and found this very tall tree that had fallen in the woods. We asked Nicholas if the tree had just recently fallen or if it has been that way for a long time. He correctly guessed that it had been that way for a long time. Then we pointed out how we could tell that this was true but looking at the ground where the roots were and how the dirt had settled and washed over it so that it now looked undisturbed. We also pointed out that the bark had fallen off and it looked very dried out and old.





We walked a little farther and Nicholas pointed out a log that had a lot of worm holes in it. Then he noticed a bird nest way up in the trees. He drew pictures of both of these in his journal.





Look at this giant seed pod that Nicholas found! I think that's the biggest one I've ever seen! I haven't figured out yet what kind of tree it came from.



Nicholas enjoyed inspecting a hole in an old tree stump.



Here's a cool bridge that Nicholas just loves.





I tip toed away from the guys and hid under the bridge. I started pretending to be a "grumpy old troll" which is a game Nicholas made up. They found me under the bridge and started making silly faces at me from on top of the bank.



Here are some more pics from our explorations around the creek. Nicholas loved putting leaves in the creek just above the little waterfalls and watching the leaves flow down the fall. We followed several of them down the creek a while just to watch how they flowed with the water or got stuck on branches along the way.