Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Spring in MO
LAD and I headed to Missouri on Saturday. From Iowa we drove thru wind, snow, sleet and rain. And it became more spring the farther south we got. About central Missouri, spring is in full bloom. Southern Missouri, even more so. They've even had to mow the yard once already. Ours is barely thinking about turning green...
How many back-packs does a boy need? Apparently, at least 2, at once.
LAD's focus was fishing and catching frogs. Kinda hard to do in winter gear, but we managed. Monday and Tuesday turned out to be relatively nice days, 40 and 50's and sunshine. Can't complain too much about that, compared.
Frog catching was much more exciting than fishing, however LAD did catch a nice fish. I have a video of that, I'll try to get that posted too.
Here's our prey. They are only about an inch long, unstretched. And they are FAST.
See him down there, way down there, that tiny speck. That's a frog. It created much joy and elation for being caught.
Tuesday we went for a drive around the ranch. We stopped at a creek and LAD had to investigate and set out "boats" and see how they would float. Once upstream a ways, he set off a walnut and we chased and he nudged it downstream for about 30 minutes
Rubber boots are good, but, whoooops, not when you step in a hole...
And so, had to take a short break to dump that all out. No frogs.
We caught about 10 frogs at Grandpa Allen's pond on Monday, then on Tuesday we carted them to Grandma Airplanes pond and turned them loose. Thankfully. I was getting worried we were going to be keeping them for "pets".
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Favorite place
Last weekend we finally made a trip to Reiman Gardens. We hadn't seen the butterflies in forever.
See it? LAD spotted it right off.
Luna moth...I remember seeing tons of these growing up, they are active at night.
Their theme this year is insects. In the conservatory, they have a giant picnic basket full of leaf cutter ants.
So springy!
Travel
Last week I traveled to Wisconsin on a business trip. Leaving Des Moines last Monday, this was parked out on the ramp...Rumor was he's going to run for president. Couldn't be any worse, and hey, he has his own transportation.
I'll spare you the boring meeting photos. Here's some outside shots as we traveled from Appleton (eastern WI) to Chippewa Falls (western) area.
New snow on Wednesday.
Ski ...mountain... area.
Fog, freezing fog, the kind that turns everything white.
Real dairy cows, outside!
Milwaukee, on the way home. Thanks Frontier, for letting me pay you 20 bucks for you to lose my luggage. But, thumbs up, for no Chicago-like delays.
Caught
Nothing catches this boy's eye faster than a new box of paints, my
paints. "Can we paint with your permanetive (as opposed to his crappy
old washables) paints"? Sure.
And of course he had to read the "constructions". NO mixing colors in
the colors, use the palette. He did pretty good, once he got the hang
of it.
