It's Springtime!

by Allie
I was sitting on my bed and I heard birds singing.  I went to my window and this is what I saw, a mama bird feeding  her babies!

Strawberry Fields

A fun place to go in the Spring is Tanaka Farms in Irvine. Kids of all ages can enjoy a wagon ride through the acres of organic fruits and veggies, with stops along the way for tasty samples. At the last stop everyone gets off for a strawberry picking and eating frenzy; you are only given 20 minutes for this part of the tour (which was not nearly enough time, especially for Nate - who could have stayed all afternoon munching on those delicious, red, ripe strawberries)!  

 

 Farms Strawberry Tours, Orange County CA

Back at home with 5lbs. of fresh fruit we decided to make a strawberry pie using a recipe from our Pie Cookbook: 

Amazon.com: Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie: Ken Haedrich: Home & Garden

Yum! ;)

Pacific Marine Mammal Center

Yesterday we took a trip down to Laguna Beach to get  a tour of The Pacific Marine Mammal Center; a place where they rescue baby seals and sea lions.  We learned about seals and sea lions, and got to see them playing in their pens.  Did you know that sea lions have ear flaps, but seals don't?  And seal lions don't have claws on their flippers, but seals do!  Seals and sea lions are Pinnipeds which are a type of sea mammal believed to be distantly related to bears.   The seal and sea lion pups drink a fish smoothie when they first rescue them, but then they have to learn to eat fresh fish (by the way, be aware the whole place smells like a fish smoothie; Nate was holding his nose while we were in the building).  The sea mammal babies were so cute!  It was a great tour, and whenever you're in Laguna, stop by to see the pups.  Click here to be taken to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center

Post by Carly

Wishy Washy Washer Woman

So we got a new apple computer.  Woo!  Along with a beautiful 20 inch wide screen, it also comes with some bells and whistles.  iMovie is one of them; today Micayla, Allie and I recorded us singing our very favorite rhyme: The Wishy Washy Washer Woman.  Click below to see it!  And have a Happy Easter!

Magic Soup Essay Contest

Written by Carly

For those of you who love to cook,  Spatulatta: Cooking 4 Kids Online  is a great site for kids who enjoy cooking!  (if you're an adult, you can still go on it!:)  Two sisters: Belle and Liv have created over 200 kids cooking shows and recipes on their great site.  Recently they sponsored a Magic Soup Essay contest; I entered it, and lo and behold...I won it!  You can click on: The Spat Blog 

to read my essay.

Little Embroidered Bird

Written by Carly

A few days ago, I got the urge to embroider something, but I wanted to embroider something other than a pillow (I have tons of embroidered pillows!), so I thought "I could embroider some shorts, or a shirt!" I looked in my drawers, and what do you know? I had the perfect pair of shorts to add a little embelishment to. So I ironed on a pattern for a little bird, and started stitching away. It was really easy and only took me 2 days, you can go to this site if you'd like to learn to embroider, it has patterns, kits...everything you need:

Sublime Stitching This ain't your gramma's embroidery! Here is a picture of the shorts when they were finished!

Trip to Temecula

Written by Carly

We went on a fun adventure up to Temecula, to visit some neat museums. Our first stop was the city museum, where we learned about the history of Temecula. Did you know that the saying "Bite the bullet," comes from when in the olden days, doctors used to give their patient a bullet to bite when they were amputating his or her limb. They didn't have pain reliever medicines back then! We saw a real bullet with a bite in it! Also at the city museum, we tried on some costumes that they had there, we looked like real pioneers! Temecula Museum

Then we grabbed some lunch, and had a nice stroll through old town Temecula: Old Town Temecula, California

The second museum was even cooler than the city museum...a hands on kids museum called The Imagination Station. There were different rooms we could go in, and tunnels leading to the rooms. In each room there were different hands on things you can try, and science concepts to learn about. Below is a picture of Allie using centripetal force to move the chair around! Also there is a picture of us in a hot air balloon in the museum. We also had fun going through a fire place and into a glow-up maze. The whole place was really cool. I'm probably not explaining it very well though, because it's so hard to put into words, so if you go to Pennypickles...at the Imagination Workshop, Temecula Children's Museum

you can read more about it!