Free Range Family

We woke up this morning to find a nice blanket of snow covering everything, for like the third time this month lol! So much for my holiday plans, darn! We were going to go to Norm's Island today and go on a nature hike. I also had plans to finish the yardwork and plant the last of our flowers. This will probably not happen in the snow with a potty training preschooler and a babe. We are watching Disney movies all day to make up for it. Le sigh... whatevs Mother Nature, if you want to be a drama queen today, then that's fine! You had just better behave on Arbor Day, I won't take no gruff from you then! :) This weekend wasn't too crazy. My family was out of state for Aunt April's dance competition and workshop, but I did have my bosses' baby shower I helped decorate for. She is having twins, a boy and a girl, around the same time Aunt Natalie is. The party was rubber ducky themed, which I thought was adorable! I loved the color palette: blue, pink, purple an...

We had a somewhat busy month in April, with all the birthdays and anniversaries and the outdoor events. All in all, it was a good month for us. Here are some things that happened to us this month: The month started out with us celebrating two good school friends of Alan's birthdays. Easton and Treyton, the two brothers, invited us to their fun birthday party at Kid's Klubhouse. We had a blast! Then we celebrated Aunt April's thirteenth birthday with sunset baseball and an ice cream cake. That Sunday was also Easter, so Alan and I went on several Easter egg hunts and then spent the day with our family and loved ones. April 23 was also Lon and I's one year wedding anniversary. I can't believe its already been a whole year! Then we finished off the month celebrating Earth Day with my family and Arbor Day with a Tree Scavenger Hunt. What a month full of holidays and birthdays! We were kinda busy this month with all the things we had to do. I participated in t...

Our Earth Day this year was lots of fun! After speaking with my mother, my plans changed slightly but that only made it easier for us to spend more time at each place rather than rush through everything. We woke up relatively early and had a small breakfast of waffles, donuts and fruit. Then Lon and I packed my tiny little car full of all of our recyclables and we headed to the recycling center. If you remember, I had called ahead to see if someone would do a little impromptu tour for us so that Alan could learn some as well. Well the tour was pretty cool, they showed us the whole recycling process that they do on a daily basis. They asked that I didn't take any pictures but we had a great learning experience! Alan's favorite part was dumping all the recyclables on the moving track to be weighed and processed. We recycled so much too! If I remember right, we recycled over four pounds of plastic materials, ten pounds of glass materials and seven pounds of aluminum cans. That...

Earth Day is this Sunday and though we don't have too much planned for that day, I have a couple fun activities for us to partake in. First, I will be posting a blog post on here about children and the benefits nature has on their development that day. It is based off of a PBS show I watched yesterday and my own hippie naturalist opinions lol. I encourage you to stop by and read it! :) For Alan and I, I have developed a nature scavenger hunt that we will be doing at hopefully several different parks. It asks for fun things like pine cones, seeds, beetles (we have little containers to catch them) and mushrooms. I hope that we can go to Zimmerman Park, Pioneer Park and Riverfront Park at least. Maybe even Phipp's Park if we have the time. :) Then I plan on taking Alan and all of our recyclable stuff down to Pacific Recycling to teach Alan a lesson about recycling. We have been recycling aluminum cans, plastic and glass for almost a year now but its been a few months sinc...

I did one of these for Arbor Day, and I believe that in this family Earth Day is as or more important of a holiday. I love Mother Nature and the Earth so naturally Earth Day is one of my favorite holidays. My son and husband share a similar appreciation for the holiday and every year we try to do something (or a few things lol) special. This year we will be busy bees, and not because of the our wedding the next day. We have plans to recycle, explore the outdoors, and dig in the Earth! :) The morning will start off with me getting my mani and pedi for the wedding, while Alan goes to daycare for an hour or so. Afterwards, we will have breakfast, do some art projects about Earth Day, and watch Sesame Street's Love the Earth DVD. (This photo thanks to http://www.growingyourbaby.com) Alan and I have been discussing the Earth lately and how we can help it out by planting and recycling. He's excited to celebrate "Earf Birfday" with us on Friday. :) So as soon as Lon ...