The kids and I have been enjoying the warm spring days… now that they are finally here. This last week was in the 70’s. We went out to the Nature Center one day last week a little later than we were expecting (4:00) and found that they close the trails and building at 4:30 and the park at 5:00, so we just went into the building for a little while, then walked out into the butterfly garden and inspected the little green spikes that will be flowers later. Then we headed over to the nature preserve park a mile or so away that stays open until sunset. Unfortunately, not 5 minutes after we got there, Jeremy texted me to tell me that he was waiting at the train station. He usually lets me know which train he’ll be taking so I can be there when it arrives, but he forgot that day. Anyway, I made him wait 20 minutes so the kids could run around a bit.

This week, we did most of our chores and schoolwork before lunch on Tuesday and then headed out to the Nature Center again. This time, I brought the camera and we took the wildflower path. We did a photo treasure hunt to find as many different flowers as we could. The kids also had me take pictures of a few different leaves they found that they want to look up. We need to get the books for those. I like teaching them how to use the internet for these things, but I think books are great too, especially since we can take them with us on hikes. For these ones, we are waiting until we are able to get to a bookstore and get identification books before we find out what they are. They found out what some were because the wildflower path had signs here and there telling the different types they had in that area, but others are unknown. After the hike, we went into the building and the turtles in the tank were amusing them. Christine saw the one turtle was up on the rock near the sunlight, warming himself and she went over to the glass near it’s head and started moving her hands up and down. The turtle followed her hands. The other two turtles swam on over and started following her hands too. It was interesting. They were so alert. Next, we headed out to the butterfly garden and saw daffodils and some pretty little white moths flying around. There are other flowers coming up as well, but no buds yet. As we were walking around, we found a mandible bone of some small animal and took it in to the rangers inside. They think it is opossum because of size and the teeth were carnivorous. While in the building before we left, we took a look over at where all the bird houses and feeders are to see if we saw any birds, but alas… there were none there. We went over to the Forest Preserve again after we were done there. We went to another part of it this time. James took his rollerblades and practiced in the parking lot while the girls went out to run among the trees. They found a recycle bin there for plastic and aluminum, so they went around finding trash in the park, some of which went into one of those slots and some of which went into the nearby trash receptacle. The small area we were in got cleaned up fairly well.

Oh, while we were there, we noticed that the Nature Center has a summer camp. Amie really wants to go to that. We’ll see. AND that they are having a thing for kids from K-4th grade this Saturday which I think I will bring Amie, Christine, and AnnaBeth to. It is during James’ Cub Scout meeting and he’ll be busy on a food drive at our church during that time. I think the Saturday after that is when the Prince Caspian movie thing will be at the Family Bookstore, so we have something for the next two weekends.