Animals in Arkansas

We returned last night from a week-long stay with my parents.  I took hundreds of pictures - even after I deleted a bunch of duplicates and goofs.  So I decided to tackle this thematically.  I guess being spring, we saw lots of animals everywhere we went...and we took pictures of almost all of them!

The first day we found two box turtles crossing the road. 

This was the bigger one, it was covered in yellow dots.

The mockingbirds were extremely busy building nests - one of the overachieving pairs had already built and filled one in a bush.

Caleb and the first fat catfish he caught:

My parents have 3 dogs - two of them are brothers - this is Tuck:

Annalise spotted this bat snoozing at the Historic Arkansas museum in Little Rock.

Everyone on the tour took a picture!  Star of the Show!

Not living animals, but there are giant robotic praying mantises in front of the Clinton Presidential Library.

The Dallas County Museum has this stuffed polar bear of display.  Obviously not from Arkansas, but someone local had shot it at some distant time in the past.

Tuck's brother is Nip:

A tarantula at Logoly State Park - I had no idea tarantulas lived in Arkansas.

I thought this moth was a leaf at first!

Annalise thought this moth was a leaf at first:

(This is what is looks like closed and next to a real leaf.)

Natalie found and carried a crippled butterfly during our hike.

My parents other dog is Stella who is bushy like a bear.  She's a sweet old girl though.

A large mouth bass Caleb caught:

Natalie and some cows out standing in their field.

And last but not least (and actually not in Arkansas) - We got to meet, love on, and feed Molly the Pony.  I pulled a random book from the shelf of leveled readers at our local library and saw a pony on the front - I did notice that she had a prosthetic leg, but as we read her story and learned more, I realized we would be going right by her home and arranged to go and meet her.  We were all a little star struck :)

Snakes and Lizards

Friday was a reptile themed day for us - it was also Rob's and my 16th wedding anniversary!  But all the reptiles had nothing to do with that, thankfully!!

First, we were outside playing and the kids scared this knight anole out of a tree.  They look kind of creepy, but aren't hard to catch and seem pretty laid back for a lizard.

The second thing that happened was I ran over a huge lime green iguana.  It is very common to see large iguanas sun bathing alongside a canal and this one was especially striking because it was bright green and looked young and healthy.  It was crossing the road to get to the canal side.  I saw it and was sure the oncoming car would hit it, but it darted away from it just in time to get smushed by me.  ack.

The third reptile of the day was this black racer snake:

Which Irene spotted on our front porch!

When it couldn't get in under out door, it quickly slithered to our next door neighbor.

The kids were going bananas because it moved very quickly with a really loopy motion.  I was not afraid that it was a poisonous snake and I was hoping to chase it out of our vicinity.  I got out a broom, but it seemed to go opposite of every direction I intended it to go and ended up getting into our neighbor's garage door.  He came out and killed the snake.  We were all disappointed because it is a useful snake and we certainly have plenty of large insects and rodents for it to prey on. 

So by then I had had enough close encounters with reptiles for a while!  I would much rather watch the birds.

Eggs and Birds

 We dyed some eggs this morning.  One of the bigs held the leftmost egg in the 2nd row for Irene while she scribbled on it with crayons.  It turned out really pretty.

Annalise quickly claimed this flower shrink wrap as hers.  It was my favorite too :)

Caleb was here.

Continuing our avian theme, today I picked up some books on John James Audubon I had on reserve at the library - two juvenile books and one a collection of watercolors.  So amazing!  Did you know that in Audubon's time (not all that long ago), scientists did not know where small birds wintered - some of them speculated that they bunched up in groups and hid underwater!

When I was a kid I thought it was boring that the Arkansas state bird was the mockingbird.  Florida, you would assume, with its myriad and amazing water birds, should have something a little more unique, but the Florida state bird - also the mockingbird.  However I have changed my tune (tweet tweet) - I love mockingbirds.  They are so much fun to watch.  We have several nesting pairs in our neighborhood and they are so brave!  I have seen them chase much bigger birds away from their babies.

Since the Time Changed...

The day the time changed, the big kids had to be at church at 8:15 to do a sound check for their choir.  I was tired, but glad because I thought it would make us adjust quickly.  However, a couple of weeks into it, I still felt jet-lagged.   I read a couple of articles that basically said that some people feel like this until the time changes back to standard time because the change is artificial, not based on the sun.  Feeling a little satisfied, I shifted our schedule around a little to let us all sleep longer.  A half hour seems to do the trick for now, and maybe as the days lengthen, we can truly adjust.

All these pictures were taken since the time changed:

Pity this barracuda - he caught it more than once.

All of our girls like taking pictures with mannequins.

We can't go sledding, but we can palm swing!

Annalise had a personal goal to learn how to make California roll.  They were not perfectly round, but they tasted exactly right!  She learned how by watching Youtubes.

Not our regular set up, but it did work one day.

At the skating rink - and I mean THE skating rink, there is only one in Miami-Dade county.