Spring at our house

I found these beautiful pictures on my camera the other day. They were taken by my five year old daughter, Arielle. She has such a passion for flowers. In fact, she is struggling on learning to ride her bike because she is more focused on picking all of the flowers along the way {mostly dandelions}. In the past week, I have pulled the car over three times to pick wildflowers for her. It would break my heart if she didn't get to see them up close and smell their wonderful aroma. Yesterday she started two books, one a Nature Guide of Wildflowers and the other one for Leaves. She is drawing all of the ones she finds and writing their names. I am thankful for the warm seasons because I know I will always have a freshly picked bouqet of flowers, courtesy of Arielle, to cheer me up!

My iris are going crazy this year! They have gotten so tall and multiplied times ten. I have a lot of work to do this fall to divide and replant them. These are some of the easiest bulbs to maintain. I have some planted on the sides of the garden bed but most of them are planted in the rocks along the fence. They do well in both places. Good thing our fence is long because I am going to need lots more room to replant them. I'll probably offer some to my neighbors as well.

~Momma to Bug n' Bear~

4 Going on 24?

I started to write this post four days ago and was very happy about the title because it described what Arielle had been acting for the past week. However, she is four and her mood changes in the blink of an eye. Suddenly she has been acting more like a two year old. To put it eloquently, she has had a few number two accidents out of the blue and I don't know what to make of it. She didn't even have those types of accidents when she was potty training believe it or not. If she is trying to get my attention it sure is working. This must be a glimpse of things to come when the baby is born and Arielle is getting even less attention.

Let's rewind to last week when she announced to me that when she was grown up she was going to get married and have babies. She went on and on about how she was going to have babies so that she could take care of them and feed them. I later found out that she told her teacher the same thing. I know the fact that I am pregnant probably has a lot to do with her recent decision making but I can't help but think she is WAY too young to be planning this out right now. Then today out of nowhere she came up to me and tried to "french kiss" me, not once but twice. She was not happy when I told her that kissing that way was inappropriate. She seems to be in such a hurry to grow up, it is almost saddening but at the same time it is refreshing to be reminded of her pure childhood innocence. She is just telling it like she sees it.

On another much greener note, we had to dig up our front yard tree that was not coming back to life. The tree that we got to replace it is beautiful! It's called a Ft. McNair Horse Chestnut and has beautiful pink flowers in the spring. Although it is a slow growing tree, it gets very tall and top heavy. I hope we can be here long enough to see it get that big.

~Momma to Bug~

Casey Key Beach Views

Today we took a drive to CaSeY KeY. It was the only outing we took on this entire vacation that Arielle actually fell asleep in the car so we took advantage of the the extra time we had in the car to do some sight-seeing. Here are some pictures I took today as we drove down the only road on this small island which is located near Venice, Florida.

Enjoy the beach views!

We couldn't believe how GIGANTIC the houses were and most of them had little BeAcH CaBaNaS across the street literally a few footsteps away from their own private beach.

Here are some pictures of a couple of beautiful houses on SiEsTa KeY which is the island that my in-laws live on and is just next door to Casey Key.

~Momma to Bug~

The dragonfly in our garden...

The other day while Arielle and I were playing in the backyard and looking at flowers in the garden, we spotted a huge dragonfly flying around. It landed on one of the Glads and just sat there...it didn't even fly away when Arielle touched it! I think it was in awe of us as much as we were in awe of it. I even had time to run inside to grab the camera and come back out to find it still perched on top of the same flower. Could be that this little guy was injured and that is why it didn't fly away but I hope not. Still, it was fun to play with him for a while.

Spread Your Wings and Fly

Although I wouldn't consider us to be a nature enthusiastic family, today we certainly had a lot of things in nature to be excited about today! We decided to drive to Estes Park for some lunch and couldn't go without stopping to feed the chipmunks along the way. Arielle wanted to feed them so badly but it wasn't easy to get them to come to her. Every time one came close she would move quickly to try to feed it so they turned and ran away. I could tell that she felt like a priness being surrounded by all of her chubby little chipmunks friends in the forest!

The birds and the bees...

When we returned home our puppy Lexi disovered that one of the baby robins from the nest was now on the ground. Fortunately she did not hurt the baby. We saw the mama robin flying around and figured that she had kicked the little ones out of the nest so they could be on their own. Sadly this little baby has not yet learned how to fly so she left him behind (we think). All he could do was hop around on the rocks and the grass. After a few hours of watching him do this we just couldn't stand it anymore...mama was nowhere in sight so went out and scooped him up in our hands. We tried to get him to fly by tossing him into the air but he just landed on the ground. Then we decided that he looked hungry so we tried to feed him crackers and hot dogs. Probably not the best choices for bird food but it was all we had. Without any luck, we thought it would be best to put him back in the nest for the night and try his flying lesson again tomorrow. Hopefully when the time is right he will spread his wings and learn how to fly like all of our babies.



Mother Nature didn't stop with the baby bird. As we were putting him back in the nest we made yet another discovered an animal that was far less cute than birds and chipmunks. It was a wasp's nest tucked beneath the playground slide! Needless to say the wasps won't be living there much longer. I don't know if I can say the same about the baby bird but I know that we are going to miss him when he is gone. Did I mention that one of Arielle's goldfish is pregnant?!?!

The Robin's Nest

High atop the roof of a little girl's playhouse...

sits a beautiful robin's nest...

What a lovely surprise we found today. After I saw the mama robin fly into Arielle's playhouse I knew there had to be a nest in there. There it was and then we saw the beaks of her hungry little baby birds. Mama bird wasn't too far away and she made sure we weren't going to hurt her little ones. So we quickly left so she could feed her babies...

after we took a picture of course!