Swedish fish meets the Pirates

The kids and I went to the Pirates game yesterday with grandpa and L. now believes that he's a good luck charm this season (i.e., at the 2 games we've been to so far with grandpa this season, the team has won). L. has entered this new season with another round of her own special logic.

But in usual form, the girls were being silly while watching the game. This time with a couple of stray Swedish fish in my backpack. Since meeting someone recently who had never had the penny candy (which is far from costing a penny these days), the girls have been talking about how much they love Swedish fish. And that prompted them to "introduce" their fish friends to a hockey game like they did with Bunny and Flat Stanley last season.

Yup, the fish did a little of everything with us at the game.

And I think Neil Diamond's, "Sweet Caroline" song is starting to grow on us. The girls found that dancing can make the song a little move lively.

The funky fish dance
[25 seconds]

BTW, catching one of the t-shirts thrown to the fans at the game was a great birthday present. Thanks Salty Pete!

A limping, but fast-moving, Lucy

Yesterday L. tried to catch Lucky Lucy to see how her leg was doing. And as we quickly discovered, the slightly crooked leg (well, she was the first chicken leg cast Fino had ever done) is not a problem anymore. It took L. a few rounds of Walk Around the Coop before she finally caught her.

I think Lucy's leg is doing just fine.

Bugs, beetles and Bunny Foo Foo

We spend a fair amount of time in the car driving to various kid-related activities on a weekly basis. We listen to audio books frequently but lately the Punch Buggy game and some old songs keep our car an interesting place to be.

My kids and their friends have a new variation on the Punch Buggy game with not only VW Bugs, but PT Cruisers. They punch someone when they see a VW and give a pinch when a PT Cruiser (dubbed a Beetle Bug) drives by. Sometimes the kids decide not to punch or pinch someone and instead call out a "save." With the various carpools we have with other families, the kids do quite a bit of chatting about how many saves everyone has, which is much better than punching and pinching all the time. There are a lot of VWs and PT Cruisers on the road these days.

And I'm not immune to the game I enjoyed playing as a kid. This morning I spotted a PT Cruiser on my commute to work this morning and actually thought about calling out a "save."

To add to the car entertainment, the kids have learned some of those classic, silly songs I haven't heard, let along sung, in years like Little Bunny Foo Foo and Baby Bumble Bee. These songs definitely get stuck in my head - just like they did when I was a kid - and now I'm wondering if the 100th round of their favorite CD isn't all that bad.

Do your kids have a game they like to play in the car?

Fun fall hike

We hiked to the summit of Sawyer Mountain over the weekend and I am happy to say, there weren't any bees roaming about on the trail. It was about 1.5 miles to the summit with a steady climb. I'd rate the hike 'Intermediate' for kids who have some endurance for the elevation gain (about 500 feet).

G. is "practicing" her ballet leaps anywhere with open space including the grocery stores and parking lots these days.

I should have known when everyone was grabbing for tissues and taking naps at the summit that we were in for a week of bad colds (I'm sniffling and listening to L.'s non-stop coughing as I write...)

The foliage is really beautiful around the summit right now.

We decided to try some crayon leaf-rubbing on the trail after reading about it in a magazine recently. Crayon-rubbing wasn't as easy as it looked in the magazine but after a few tries, the kids made a fun work of art.

L., while collecting leaves in her hat, also got a little carried away with crayon-rubbing. She decided to make impressions of the writing on some gravestones in the 19th century cemetery we passed on the trail because she spotted a misspelling.

She was highly amused with this one even though I told her it was likely a space issue rather than an actual error.

Hey diddle diddle is that an orange eraser?

A little nursery rhyme based on an accident yesterday at the Wildlife Park.

Hey Diddle Diddle
The peacock and eraser-iddle
The accident mom couldn't stop
The little girls gasped to see such a sight
And the chipmunk ran away with the top!

The girls felt awful about the accident but it all turned out OK in the end (and the rangers were very understanding once they stopped laughing).

Fall hiking - wear orange

We heard a lot of gunshots when we were hiking the other day and the
kids don't like that much, even while wearing their bright orange hats.

Since I am not familiar with the world of hunting, I went looking on
the IFW website to see when hunting season was and learned some interesting stuff.

The first thing was that there is no CLOSED season for hunting coyote, woodchuck, porcupine and red squirrel. So basically there could be a hunter with a gun in the woods, legally, at any time of year.

I narrowed down my search dates to when hunters will be out in the woods
with guns to hunt deer and grouse/pheasant because all are in abundance in the areas where we like to hike. And since 67,725 deer hunting
permits were issued this year, that's the season we think we'll hear the most shots fired while in the woods.

October 2 - December 31 - Grouse, pheasant and bobwhite quail October 30 - November 25 - Deer with firearms November 27 - December 9 - Deer with muzzleloaders

So basically from now until the end of December everyone should be
especially careful while hiking and wear their orange gear.

Name that leaf

We went for a quick hike this weekend to Sawyer Mountain and have plans to go back again when we have more time (more than an hour before dusk). On the next trip we plan to bring our Tree Club notebook to help us identify some deciduous trees (the ones with the falling leaves right now).

We all do pretty well identifying various evergreens but the deciduous trees are much harder to figure out. There are so many tiny details to remember in order to tell the differences among them.

The leaf that prompted us to return with our tree identifying notebook. We guessed it was from a maple tree but needed to consult the book at home to figure out it was a sugar maple leaf.

Do you have a trick to help identify certain types of leaves? We know the white pine tree one (5 needles = 5 letters in w-h-i-t-e). We'd love a few other tips to make it easier for us to remember if you have 'em.