One BIG Happy Family

We've been watching the robin's nest in the backyard. A few weeks ago the first babies left and 5 new eggs were laid.

Last Saturday, we were blessed with four new babies. They had clearly just been born, as they had no feathers and were teeny tiny. There was still one egg in the nest for the rest of the day. Sunday it was gone so we were sure that it didn't hatch.

We've been watching this week as they have gotten a lot bigger and more feathery. Today one of the kids noticed that there were indeed 5 beeks poking out of the nest. Its been hard to tell since usually they are just a big pile of bird, but we indeed saw 5 beeks - so all 5 eggs hatched.

We stood quietly on the porch and watched as two different robins flew around the back yard and approached the nest - and then both of them flew to the nest.

I guess with this many babies, it takes both a mom AND a dad to feed the babies.

This nest has really afforded us some fun bird watching over the past few years.

(photos are grainy because I'm taking them through the screen of the porch - I don't want to go out and get close enough to get photos for fear of scaring away Mom and Dad)

Start of a busy weekend

So we have a busy weekend planned this weekend.

It starts this evening with the kids piano recital. Samantha will be late to it as I will be taking her straight from her dance lesson.

Tomorrow is actually our calmest day with Michael's little league game at 9am.

On Sunday, I head out bright and early to DC to work at the DC JDRF walk (our walk is next weekend). Mike and the kids will go to Michael's double-header travel games - I will arrive just as the games start at 1pm

Sunday night Mike and I have to run to a meeting kicking-off the planning for our little league to be hosting the District level all-star tournament for 11s and 12s.

Wake me up when its Monday.

Kilroy Was Here

Samantha has been a member of a drama group associated with a nearby church for this past school year. Throughout the fall, they had drama lessons, culminating with auditions for their spring production. Throughout the winter, they rehearsed their play with more and more rehearsal hours each week, leading up to 3 2-hour long productions over a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the end of April.










The play was called Kilroy Was Here. It was based on the World War II character that began showing up all throughout the European theater of the war, and became the American calling card.

Samanthas was Mrs. King, the supervisor of a Long Island USO.



I really enjoyed the play. It had lots of singing and dancing and the kids did a great job - much more sophisticated than I expected for kids from 3rd grade - 8th grade. The costumes and the hair and makeup were perfect for the 40s era. I was overall very, very pleased with the production and I know that Samantha had a great time doing this play and made some great friends in the process.

(You can click on any photo to see a larger version)

Nature takes care of itself

The eggs in our birdsnest hatched a couple of weeks ago. We have been watching the birds and they've been growing quickly, getting their feathers, etc. Its been raining for about a week, and a few days ago we looked out to see all the birds gone. I thought that was unusual because it was pretty quick and I hadn't even seen the birds flapping, etc. I looked to make sure they hadn't fallen out of the nest (this happened to one last year) and concluded that maybe Mama took them to another, dried place.

Today, there are new eggs in the nest.

Do you think the birds getting ready to lay eggs told the other Mama she needed the nest and Mama moved her birds to another location? Sure seems to me. Seems we have the most popular nest in town - for the third year in a row.