Oh yesterday was a stay in your jammies until ten, read books on the papasan all the while, drinking coffee like it’s the last pot in the world, kind of day.  We did manage to meander down to our old favorite, the wildlife refuge, for just a moment- to see the migrations beginning, collect some feathers, and perhaps find some other treasures along the way.

Our supplies included; butterfly identification book, bird identification book, binoculars, treasure box, camera(s), snacks, and coconut water.  Enough to keep us busy until well past lunch time.  

There were incredible amounts of those flying beauties to identify, let me tell you.  So many, our little book could not lead us to the correct name.  So, I came here, to this vast ocean of information, and found a fantastic site for looking up our fluttering friends.  It seems our little swampy-green world is filled with the gulf fritillary variety.  

At any given moment there is always at least a dozen in plain site.  We also spotted (with no need to flip pages) the swallowtail numerous times.

But, the intention of our journey today was feathers.  We collected so many feathers our box was brimming with them.  I would have liked to have gone into the visitors center to ID them but alas, it was closed.  Sadly, we are such common passer by-ers with oh so many questions, I wouldn’t doubt if they saw our vehicle coming and quick shut off the lights and hid behind the desk.

Regardless, we had our treasures, and we had our fill of hiking, and our bellies were asking for more than pretzles, so home again- home again we went.

My plan was to put the boys down for a (much-needed) nap and get all the supplies together to create.  But, my (bigger) little man had other plans.  So, we wandered the yard in search of vines, wove them into a circle, and adorned it with some mohair and beads.  We chose the most glorious of our feathers, flapped them wildly, then poked holes in them and strung them up.  We picked out gems to weigh them and tied them up with fishing line.  Until finally, our mobile was complete.

Course we had to make an acorn necklace too.  Miles insisted with the right combination of words, he himself would turn into a tree with this magic necklace around his neck.  “What do tree’s do?” he wondered.  He informed me that he would like to be a tree, if I was a tree, right next to him.  Oh, when they are good they are so very good.

Did you get outside this week?  Did you create anything out of it?