I told the fam that for Mother's Day, I wanted to do a bunch of fun stuff together with nobody complaining and everyone at least pretending to have fun. I don't get a whole lot of love from sitting around and being pampered, so off we went. Oh, and I made Mother's Day last two full days because why not? I AM THE MOM AND I SAID SO SO GET IN THE VAN.
On Saturday, we started off with a bird festival, otherwise known as a "bood" festival, thanks to the Suz and her inability to say "R."
The bird festival was a whole park loaded with activities and such all having to do with the theme, BIRDS. The kids made a bird feeder by lathering a toilet paper tube with crisco and then rolling the greasy mess in seed:
They also decorated binoculars, which happened to be two toilet paper tubes stuck together:
Pa saw the amount of empty toilet paper tubes used at the event and figures someone has some potty issues they might need to attend to. Seriously. BAGS and BAGS of empty tubes. Huh.
We also learned some things about the different owls that can be found in our region. At this particular stop, there were several owls on display. Stuffed ones, that is. I spent the whole time wondering whether or not the owls' eyes were real or not. I didn't ask, because really, there's only so much embarrassment the Pa and the kids can handle in one day.
Each kid also stamped a wooden necklace--just one more thing to add to their ever-increasing box of "treasures:"
We saw some real birds too, this one being a peregrine falcon (bird on the right):
Of course, Pa had to make a joke about not seeing a pair of green falcons, and I laughed too loud, and what's new, and moving right along.
The last craft of the day involved decorating a mesh 'sock' to hold finch food:
The boys and I took a close look at sample bird eggs, trying to determine if the hummingbird's egg looked more like Tylenol or a tic-tac. We made no solid conclusions, but we did decide that it would take a lot of hummingbird eggs to make a decent breakfast:
We finished our day by having a picnic at the park with our friends, and soon thereafter watching some sort of dance that Pa assumed involved the calling of birds and mashed potatoes to the party. We never did figure out what the chanting was all about.
From the festival, we headed straight to an open house at our local public broadcasting station (OPB), where we got a tour of the station as well as free junk galore. FROM THERE, we headed to my favorite fro-yo place, and then we finished off the day with some take out from KFC. How fitting that we book-ended the day with a bird and some mashed potatoes.
