4th of July in Nebraska

We love all the fun things that come with celebrating the 4th of July in Nebraska, like a cookout. We joined Troy's parents at the Fontenelle Hills neighborhood picnic. What did Julia eat? Even though all the food on her plate is usually Julia-approved, she only ate chips. And she drank Capri Sun.

Evelyn devoured everything on her plate, especially since she knew chocolate cake was waiting for her.

Then we headed over to my parents' house to do fireworks. My mom had bought snappers for the girls; Evelyn preferred the "bombs away" method to get the little guys to snap and pop.

Evelyn also did some sparklers on her own. After it got darker, we did small, festive fireworks like fountains and ground flowers. All things we can't do back home in Maryland, and all things Evelyn loved. (Julia, by the way, had to go to bed early tonight, so we saved some fireworks to do with her another day.)

Flooding in Hayworth Park

Hayworth Park in Bellevue is notorious for being flooded by the Missouri River in the spring and summer. With this being a record-breaking year for flooding along the Missouri River in Nebraska, Hayworth is a lost cause. Here is a view of the park area (looking east): New soccer fields were recently built on the north side of the main road . . . which are now completely under water.

If you look closely through the trees in this picture, you can see the roof of a picnic pavillion -

As we walked back up the hill from the park, we spotted a great blue heron in the water. Again, look closely, and you will see two lines . . . which are railroad tracks. Like I said, really severe flooding this year.

Road Trippin'

We embarked on our 1,200-mile journey west this morning. The girls were loaded up with all sorts of car-friendly activities: coloring books (with "Color Wonder" markers that only color on special paper), sticker books, notebooks and pencils, audio picture books and DVD movies. Julia is browsing through her Elmo sticker book here - Evelyn drew a picture of a worm family, and then she wrote a story about their family portrait. This "story-starter" book was one of the best things I've ever bought for $1.00.

By the way, our car is loaded to the gills because we are bringing baby things to family members. Thankfully the car will be much less full on the return trip.

Camera Shy

Last night I went into the girls' rooms to snap some pictures of the sleeping beauties. Julia was hiding under all her animals and pillows . . . . . . and Evelyn was hiding under her sheets. Both girls were camera shy!

Book Activity

Today's weather didn't allow us to go to the pool - thunderstorms kept popping up all afternoon - so we girls did a quick math/science activity. We read the book The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. The ladybug in the story runs into several animals, each one bigger than the previous one, challenging them to fight. When the blue whale (literally) slaps some sense into the ladybug, he goes back home, where he belongs.

I researched the lengths of all twelve animals in the story. Then we headed outside to mark off the sizes of the animals, with tape measure and chalk in hand. Julia totally got into the project, too, marking off measurements with chalk.
In the picture below, Evelyn is marking off how long/tall a boa constrictor and gorilla are (six feet). The highlight of this activity was measuring the length of a blue whale. 80 feet is pretty long, especially when you see the distance on the sidewalk!
After our math/science activity, the girls scribbled and drew some pictures.
Julia had to use every single piece of colorful chalk in her collage. Meanwhile, Evelyn worked on drawing a humongous tree and a sun.

First Day vs Last Day

Way back on August 30, 2010, Evelyn went to her first day of school as a first-grader. I took a picture of the eager scholar in our front yard -Fast-forward nine and a half months to today, the last day of school. I don't know if it's the way her hair is pulled back in a pony tail, but Evelyn seems to look so much older in this picture -
Last August, I also took a picture of Evelyn as we walked to school -
Here's our little nature-lover this morning. She found some interesting leaves on our walk to school, and she kept her eyes peeled for herons or beavers in/near the creek by her school (we didn't see any today).

Bald Eagle Sighting

Julia and I headed to Black Hill Regional Park for another pontoon boat ride this afternoon. Since today's event was scheduled for 4:00, Evelyn was able to come, too. The theme this time was bald eagles. All day we girls had been hoping and wishing that we would see one of the park's resident bald eagles . . .. . . and we got our wish! I don't think we had been on the boat for five minutes before I spotted an eagle perched in a dead tree at the water's edge. Without seeing its mate, we couldn't tell if this was the male or female; the two birds need to be next to each other in order to tell the male (smaller) from the female (bigger). Regardless, we were very excited to see a bald eagle, in the wild, so close!
As our boat floated closer to the eagle's tree, it flew off. We spent the rest of our time on the boat learning about eagles in general and the specific eagles that nest in the park. The male has lived here since 2006. He has had three different females as mates - the two previous ones died. There have been two bald eagle babies every year except last year (2010). Unfortunately, one of this year's babies died just last week. The parent eagles stay in the same nest year-round while the babies eventually fly away to make a home of their own.
While cruising around the lake, we kept an eye out for the eagle. We didn't see it again, but we did see a blue heron and this osprey, two other birds with huge wingspans. It was another awesome wildlife-spotting day at the park!