Finally, an Update! And a Cat!

We've been our "normal", scattered, busy selves. Lots of specific adventures that deserve an update have occurred, but the latest and perhaps neatest one is our decision to adopt "Spooky". She's a Manx who was apparently abandonded in the neighborhood. We noticed her about a month ago coming and going from the storm drain in front of our house. We thought she was a bobcat due to her loping gait and the stubby tail, characteristic of the breed. However, we (and 2-3 of the neighbors) soon realized she was a stray, and started leaving out food/water. Finally, we got to the point of thinking she'd become either fox food, a mommy w/feral kittens, or an accident right in front of our house unless something was done. So yesterday we collected her and took her to the vet for a check-up. Results: she's about 1 yr old, w/no ticks, worms, fleas, pet chip, or spay scar; she now has vaccinations. She'll go back in 2-3 weeks to get spayed. She's obviously been a house cat as she's never scratched or bit, and whilst a bit skittish, never flinched as the vet poked, prodded, and gave her 2 shots. She's cool. Very cool. She's spent the evening exploring every corner of our house to the delight of the kids. She's now alseep on the bed next to Sis. Christy is all stuffed up so we're watching for allergies. But all-in-all, we're blessed to have her. Our goal is to keep her as an indoor cat from here on out.

Its Cherry Blossom Season in our Nation's Capital!

The children and I took the metro into DC yesterday. Scotty found us at the metro station closest to his work and joined us. We all walked across the National Mall to the tidal basin and soaked in the beauty. We walked over to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt side and had a picnic lunch (out of the wind!). It was an overcast day and rained all afternoon, but we missed the rain and had a very enjoyable morning. It is a privilege to get to enjoy the Cherry Blossom's each year.

As we were eating lunch we heard the sound of a V22 Osprey and it turned and flew right above us - awesome! We waved just in case it was our dear friend Christy's husband, Dan, flying it! http://thekaiserchronicles.blogspot.com/. We named our daughter Christy after this precious young woman of God. Scotty took this great photo of the Osprey for us. They rest of us were too busy watching it!





The strip of pink is a delightful carpet of cherry blossom petals. The children yearned to walk upon the delicate carpet. Reminded us of a scene out of an Anne of Green Gables book.




Did I mention Seth received a hat and boots for his birthday?



There were several patches of tulips near the Tidal Basin - a National Parks sign called it the Tulip Library. It was a nice stop on our walk back to the metro station. We all love flowers!

We also got to watch a missing man formation fly over Arlington Cemetary on our walk back. The children, amazingly, had never had the privilege of seeing one. We watched one of the fighter jets peel away and fly up into the sky. A privilege and an honor.

The cherry blossoms offer a plethora of photographic possibilities. I think that next year, in addition to our traditional family visit, I will try to get up there myself for a few hours and take photographs to my heart's content. I could visualize so many different shots in my mind yesterday. Beautiful - especially with the view of some of our national monuments.

Looking at the stars, planets and moving objects in the heavens

Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. Genesis 1:16

www.heavens-above.com

Our family went to a winter night sky program at a planeterium while visiting a dear friend in NC and we were hooked! They recommended the above website to get a chart of the current night sky so you can find the constellations. No telescope needed! Just your eyes and a sky chart from the website or from the book I recommend below. Use a flashlight with a red light (you can put red cellophane over yours if need be) when looking at the chart so you don't ruin your night vision. All four of our children can now find Casseopia, Big Dipper, North Star, and Orion (and identify and name the red and blue stars in Orion) any time the stars are visible, without the aid of a chart.

We also use the website to locate satellite passes on any given night. Last night, there was a fairly bright one at the zenith of the sky at 8:30pm so Scotty took the children outside a few minutes early to get their eyes adjusted and also to locate the path of the satellite ahead of time. This time it went right by Mars so was easy to find. We also use the site to find out when the International Space Station (ISS) will be visibly passing overhead. The next BRIGHT pass over is on April 10th - can't wait!

For those of you in the DC area, we also discovered that the Air and Space Museum has a free planeterium program about the current night sky on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays at 11am. We have been once and it was very helpful to reiterate much of what we learned from the planeterium in NC and what we'd learned using our sky charts and gazing at the night sky. The children anticipated much of what the speaker was going to say. This has been a fun journey for all of us.

The planeterium program gave credit at the end of its show to H.A. Rey. I thought this was odd as he is the creator and author of the original Curious George books. I did some research and discovered that he also wrote and illustrated two books about the night sky which made sky viewing much easier for all of us. He connects the stars in the constellations in ways that make a lot more sense and make them much easier to find.

His first book "The Stars: A New Way to See Them" has a lot more information for older children and adults but is not necessarily more helpful. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395248302/ref=pd_cp_b_1?pf_rd_p=317711001&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0395244188&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0QFBXGTNB7ZA2D38ZAYM I

The second book "Find the Constellations" is the one I highly recommend to you and/or your children. http://www.amazon.com/Find-Constellations-H-Rey/dp/0395244188/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_i

Here's a typical review for the book on Amazon.com:
38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
It's the Greatest!, January 14, 2002
By Brad4d "bb" (United States) - See all my reviewsI'm a doc with over 3 years of post-doc training and I can't think of a single science text which is more enjoyable to read. Even after 16 years of astronomical observation, I still think of the constellations as Rey drew them (they are easier to remember), and I still get this text out when I want to show someone how to enjoy astronomy. If all science writers were like Mr Rey, we wouldn't be too worried about scientific illiteracy in this country. Along with its twin, The Stars, it stands alone. This treasure is "for kids from one to ninety-two."

We invite you to also enjoy the stars in the heavens above. Let us know if the stars start to become your familiar friends just like they have for us.

Blast Off - Seth's Birthday Dinner!

Seth blows out his candles/rocket engines. We sang him Happy Birthday during supper and then when we lit the candles we all did a very loud countdown until Blast Off and that's when he blew his candles out.

Kyle and Katie from next door shared Seth's birthday dinner, etc with us. It was a special night as Scotty started it off praying a special blessing over Seth (he does this with each of the children on their birthdays). It was also neat to hear Katie say, "Mr Nowlin are you going to read a chapter from a book to us tonight?". Scotty couldn't resist that and so read from the book Rascal which he's been reading to the children at night.

Happy Birthday Seth! Seth loves God's creation (especially birds and their songs), cooking & baking, imaging he's all sorts of characters in history, looking at books, classical and irish music, racing Jonnie on his bike, hard work towards a useful end, a good battle, snuggling, playing all sorts of sports, and protesting when told to do something that goes against what he wants to do at the moment (we continue to work on that one!). We thank God for Seth in each of our lives!

Seth is 4 Today - April 1st!

We just finished his cake. Seth loves to help me in the kitchen so we did it together - a great birthday treat for him. We got the idea for the cake out of a book Scotty's mom recently sent me. Her sister Carol sent it to her when Scotty and his brother Mark were little boys.


Seth and I used a cake mix and baked it in a standard 13 x 9 pan. Then we cut up the baked cake into the shapes we needed. We then assembled them into our basic rocket shape.

Way to go Seth!

Glueing the cake pieces together with frosting.

Frosted and decorated. We took some liberties on the decorations as Seth isn't a fan of the licorice and gumdrops suggested in the book. Faith and Christy made the US flag for him.

The book suggested red licorice for the engines, but we thought it would be very fun to put his four candles there and light up his cake for lift off tonight!

Tadpole Update

Yesterday, March 31st, we decided we had better stop talking about reducing the number of tadpoles in our 10 gallon tank and actually take some action. So, on an overcast, misty day we transfered about 40 of our tadpoles to a water pitcher and drove to our local reservoir.






Saying our goodbyes :-)

Ready to put them in!

We chose this location as it had shallow water and lots of rocks for the tadpoles to hide under. Little did we know that a duck was lying in wait to munch on the tadpoles! As soon as Faith put them in the water, the duck pounced and ate up two of them. We sprang into action and stirred up the water to make it cloudy so the tadpoles could find hiding places. The children meanwhile kept the ducks away. When we were satisfied that all of the tadpoles were out of sight, we headed for home. I didn't intend to give them a real life lesson on the food chain yesterday - lol!




Keeping the ducks away!

As an aside, we had a robin thumping on the window near our tadpoles for two mornings. He would steadily thump, thump, thump for over an hour. Scotty finally put some butcher paper up on the window so the robin would stop "seeing" another robin in our window. We read up on why the robin was doing this and discovered its fairly common behaviour this time of year. The male robin gets territorial as it considers the needs of its upcoming babies and so it assumes a dominant position when it sees another male robin. If this doesn't work, it actually butts up against the other robin. When that robin does the same thing back (i.e. its reflection) the robin gets very agitated and can leave blood and feathers on the window. Ours didn't get that bad as Scotty got the paper up and it stopped. As I was upstairs listening to the thumps, I started thinking of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". Shiver!!!!

Putting up the butcher paper...

Holland two springs ago...

...we enjoyed England, Scotland and Wales so much (we didn't make it to Ireland - sigh!) that we didn't travel Europe very often. We did visit Holland in the Spring though - we were so glad we did. Its hard to describe or show with photographs just what acres of tulips look like to the eye - or how they delight the soul. I am very thankful that we have the memories tucked away in our minds and hearts. A very small taste of heaven.


Our favorite visit was to Corrie ten Boom's home at the ten Boom watch shop in Rotterdam. Her family helped as many Jewish people as they could before they themselves were sent to Nazi concentration camps. I'll put together a separate post describing this experience.


Our second favorite experience was to see and walk amongst fields and fields of flowers.


Thirdly, the girls and I spent 2+ hours in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.


Fourth, there is a cathedral near the ten Boom home which has the most amazing, beautiful organ we've ever seen.


Fifth, we watched the annual flower parade.


Sixth, we got to explore some windmills.


Seventh, we enjoyed our bed and breakfast with soft boiled eggs and toast for breakfast (and many other wonderful foods) and the children enjoyed playing in the back garden with the proprietors grand daughters.

Eighth, we all crammed into a small cabin on the overnight ferry and I fretted all night that I would fall from my very narrow, high bunk and fall on my boys on the floor! It was a very fun experience despite my falling fears :-)



Street signs for bikes were just as common as for vehicles. Families riding for miles to get somewhere together was a common site. In Rotterdam I saw woman with a small child in a seat behind her, another small child on the handlebars, and an umbrells stroller slung across the mom's back so they could switch to walking when need be.
A pretty nice view for these Hollanders we saw riding their bikes! Daffodils!

We ate lots of cheese whilst in Rotterdam - yum!






Uh, Daddy, our highway seems to be lifting up!





Exploring the field of tulips up close.
















Some big shoes to fill :-)

No matter the weather, we visit the local beach wherever we go.


Flower parade!




A tribute to Rembrandt


Selling flower bulbs...

Not all of the beautiful colors were from flowers...


One of the windmills we explored was used to grind up powders for paints.

LOVE these colors too! Yum!