Aliana's Birthday Activity-Butterfly House

On our way to the Butterfly House on a rainy Sunday; it's on the left.

We would have loved to explore more outside, look at the background behind Mark, but it was raining and everyone's stomach's were hungry.

Beautiful artwork was all inside the house just before entering the butterfly area.

(I know it's not the best quality but it was still a good picture.)

We arrived 15 minutes before they released a habitat full of butterflies into the house.

Here a lady is giving a speech about them and I found Tony and Aliana standing like this listening intently.

We found a box full of chrysalises.

Happy 3rd Birthday Aliana.

Celebrating Aliana's Birthday

Grammy, Roger & Noni came to visit for an extended weekend for Aliana's birthday.

Aliana got a princess cake, which means the cake was her dress.  Well I have to admit that I didn't make this cake.  After 6, YES 6 attempts, we resorted to a premade dome cake where I embellished it once we got home. I don't think I have ever tried as hard as I did for this one.  We think it's the oven.

Priceless face reaction. 

She couldn't believe that I was cutting her princess's dress.

Playing with Noni

We took Noni to the park to play since we knew it was going to rain the rest of the week.

Aliana yells, "Momma take a picture of me."

Noni had a bit of fun ;-)

Pecan Harvesting

Pecan harvesting...well sort of ;-)

We were so excited to find out about 2 months ago that all the trees that we have in the back are pecan trees.

So this day, we went out there looking for them to see if they really were edible.

Well, the teacher came out in me and this turned out to be a science & math lesson-hehe.

We paired up in groups, looked for as many as we could in the same amount of time, counted each bucket, weighed them per group and then figured out who quantifively had more, whose wieghed more and then did an experiement to figure out if the weight had anything to do with whether the pecan was ripe or dried up inside; in other words, the heavier pecan was ripe because of more moisture as to the lighter one who might be dried up - less moisture.

Counting

Weighing

hehe - I had them then count by two's to make the process go quicker (an excuse, maybe)

Harvesting time, we have to step on them heavy enough to pop the shell but light enou to not crush the plump nut.  By the end of this, we could tell if the nut was good or bad by the way the shell broke open.

Showing off all the ripe pecans we found; I bet it came close to 20.

Pecan harvesting can do this to a person.

Treasure under ground

Mark started cleaning up & digging in the back of the property.  At this pointed we discovered that all the extra building material that the construction workers had was dumped there 6 years ago, then covered with the planter's soil that they had used in the front; which then was coated heavily with weeds.  So this has been an ongoing project to recover as much as we can before the fence is started and so we can use them for future projects.

The kids have so much fun back there.

It will eventually become a treehouse area (on the right side by the trees) and fire pit (to the left of that).

Can you see them ;-)

I'm standing on my patio and they are in the middle of the two groups of trees.

So this is what we created one gorgeous day with Mark's pile of rocks.

We jumped into medieval times.  They became knights slaying a dragon, balancing on the lava rocks & getting to the volcano (in the middle) before it erupted.

I actually had fun building it and creating a creative scene.