We Love the Springtime So So So Much!!

I have taken great pride in making sure that my children are lovers of the outdoors. I love that they love to look at bugs and dig in the dirt and watch the rain fall. Children are so natural outside. It's where they belong. And I say that as a nature lover...not as a mother of four who sends her kids outside all the time.

Today, Jayci found a Sowbug (or rollie pollie, as we like to call them). She carried it around for about 10 minutes before I finally decided to make it a little home. She kept asking me if he could sleep in her bed with her. Of course, I said no over and over again and told her to take it outside, but she wouldn't. Finally, while carrying him around, before he got his home, she said, "I wish I should be a Ladybug so I can be with him and live under a rock." That's when I decided to get him a little home so he could stay with her. Here's a video of her singing to another rollie pollie:

Another interesting thing is this: a little mommy and daddy bird decided that they would build their nest under the eave (not sure if that's what it actually is) of our house. Here's a pic of where the nest is:

That's the sun room, so don't worry. They don't have access to the attic. When they leave (if they ever do...) we're going to seal it up and fix it.

Anyway, so for about a month we've been hearing the baby birds chirping and seeing the mommy and daddy bird bring food to the babies, though we can't see the babies. Then, the other day, I came home to find my sweet, stupid dog Blake with a bird in his mouth in the back yard!! It was still alive and was trying to fight him away, so of course, I went out and got him to leave it alone. The poor little bird was so scared and was trying so hard to get away from me, but I was bent on catching it and saving it.

Long story short, I caught it, called Game and Fish and they told me to just put it back in the nest. It had a messed up leg, thanks to the dog, but the G&F guy said that it would be able to function just fine with one leg. All it needs to do is learn to fly. If its parents think it's worth saving, they'll continue taking care of it until it's better. So I put it back up in the nest and it jumped down again and got in the apple tree.

The weirdest thing in all of this is how many other birds there were sitting around watching! It was like the Hitchcock movie The Birds. I thought everybody had seen that, but I mentioned it to Chad and he didn't know what I was talking about, so I guess not everybody knows, but anyway, here's a picture of that! I think at one point, I counted 12 or 13 birds just hanging around watching. It must have been the bird equivalent to a bad car wreck that you just have to stop by and watch. Two of those birds are the parents. It was kind of creepy after awhile. Sadly, Blake killed the other baby bird before I had a chance to save it. Gross. So so gross. Eww.