Fun with birds and Maggie

Although I’ve been spending the majority of my time this summer reading a book or ten, (morning runs notwithstanding) I have done a few minor adventures.

Last week, for example, I accompanied Lizzy on a bird club field trip for the first time. Wow, those people are seriously good at birds.

Here, we have a bluebird: 

Here we have a bluebird eating a giant gross grub:

Here we have a bird that is blue sitting on a tree, but I’m not sure if it’s a bluebird or an indigo bunting or the other bird-that-is-blue that they were talking about:

Various other birds:

Goldfinch sitting on the tree:

Flowers, because they’re pretty:

Sheep (I nailed that identification):

Some more birds that they were excited about:

Sunset.

Bluebirds.

A swallow, I think:

Not sure if this was the bird they were all really excited about and came out to see…but probably not:

The next day we hosted four-year-old Maggie, who took one look at Lizzy and imprinted.

They played critters.

They played in the sand pit.

They pet the bunny.

That was all before lunch. We had a picnic

and then they went to the playground and Lizzy pushed her on the swings.

We chased each other around the skate park, where the floor was lava, or the bumps were lava, or possibly Maggie had magical dust that made both of them, or neither of them, lava. Although I can attest from the brief moment I kicked off my flip-flops that the concrete may, in fact, have been actual lava.

Then we went to the pool while Lizzy took a break at home, where fortunately Maggie made some new best friends who were enamored with our rainbow unicorn floatie and played very nicely with her for an hour.

After we got home and changed, I set her up on the couch with a tray, Cheerios, and a stack of colored paper.

“I like my office” - Maggie

Just before her mom picked her up, I escalated the art to glue and glitter, in which I overestimated the fine motor skill of a tired four-year-old with an open jar of glitter. So now our whole house has a fine sheen of magical purple glitter dust that just may cause or prevent the floor to become lava.

the kids and Charlie making mocktails for FFN