Productive Weekend

This was a good weekend at home. Quite a productive one as far as the kids are concerned:

• R got started on his Pinewood Derby car, with a lot of M's help
• T lamented about how we haven't seen any birds this winter, which made us realize that we don't have any birdseed out -- so he and I took care of that.
• T and R (mostly T) made some beautiful home-made valentine cards (that will get mailed out tomorrow and arrive a bit late)
• I took another card-making class and had a lot of fun. I came home with the knowledge of about 3-4 techniques that I never knew how to do.
• On a whim, I made some oatmeal-cranberry-chocolate chip cookies (I made up the recipe based on an oatmeal cookie recipe) and they were delicious)
• M went pheasant hunting with Uncle B and had a good time (and is bringing the birds home as I type).
• M also hunted cay-utes (that's a hard "I" sound, like in Kite) and foxes on our friends farm because the cay-yutes (aka cayote) and foxes were eating his pheasant. Our friend is about to buy a flock of sheep and wants the preditors GONE before he gets them on his farm. By the way, they didn't see hide nore hair of the aforementioned preditors that night.

Here are some pictures of our productivity:

R and M laying out R's design on draft paper (R wants his car to look like a shark. Sounds tricky to me, but M says it will be no problem and is quite excited about it.

R and M working the bench press together to drill in the holes where the weights will be (this thing needs to weigh 5 ounces, per the rules.)

I thought this was cute :> R can't reach, so he's standing on the recycling bin. Perfect height! They're working in the garage wearing their winter jackets because it was about 33 degrees in the garage (just a few degrees warmer than it was outside).
Now, it's scroll saw time. This is no job for a kid, so R hams it up for the picture while M concentrates on the job at hand.

A good day's work. R shows the basic shape of his shark car. Can you see the fin on top and the tail in the back?

T trying to point to his newly made bird feeder. He's having a hard time looking up with it snowing and all. He started the feeder at preschool, but wasn't happy with the amount of bird seed on it (or lack thereof). So, we added more suet (aka bacon grease) and more bird seed. While we were at it, we filled the three bird feeders that were hanging empty in the back yard. When I woke up this morning, T greeted me excitedly, saying, "Mom, there are birds EVERYwhere today!"

Mission accomplished.



We hung T's feeder on the crabapple tree so that we could see it from our dining room window.


And, finally, the assorted valentines that the boys (mostly T) made today.