snow geese

Every spring snow geese pass through this area on their migration north. There is a nature preserve near here where 60,000 to 100,000 snow geese stop for a couple weeks every year. (Canada geese and tundra swans also migrate through the same area as well as multiple types of duck.) You can see them flying around every time you leave the house and there are always big flocks of them in farm fields. We went to see them on Friday. 

Walking to the lake.

Flying geese - kind of hard to see in the picture.

If you make these pictures larger you can kind of see the geese. There were about sixty thousand of them the day we went, but the lake was so icy that they were all out by some islands where the water had thawed. There are normally more of them closer to shore and even walking around the pavilion by the lake. 

Posing by a tree.

The rest of the pictures are all from inside the nature center. 

Piper's favorite birds.

Cute kids.

Piper seeing how big her wingspan is.

Watching construction work outside.

A display about how they count all the geese.

Rory doing a scavenger hunt.

finger painting

sick children

Everyone has been sick for the past week. Rory and Gage both had fevers and spent the day sleeping and watching movies last Thursday. Then Crosby got a slight fever and was fussy for a couple days. Piper ended up with the worst. She got sick on Saturday with croup and is still recovering. We spent time for a few nights wrapped in blankets on the deck so she could breathe and she couldn't talk for a few days. Every time she needed to say something she would whisper. Mostly she just didn't speak. She didn't want to play either. She watched lots of movies and spent lots of time just sitting watching everyone else playing. She's almost better now and Adam is the only one left to get sick. Hopefully I get to sleep sometime this week.

Piper just sat in this basket and moved toys around for at least half an hour the other day.

This picture was an attempt at a smile.

This is how she looked most of the time.

old pictures

I've been sorting through old pictures getting them ready to print. I haven't had any printed since September of 2011 and I now have 5,082 pictures to sort through. Here are a few of the ones I've found.

Rory, Gage and Piper at the Children's Festival at Ten Thousand Villages in June 2012.

Rory and Gage in October 2011 at Central Park in Lancaster.

Rory and Piper in October(?) 2011.

Gage dressed as a princess in 2011. (He finds this picture hilarious.)

Gage in April of 2012.

Piper in the summer of 2012.

Piper in the spring of 2011. 

Rory and Gage in summer 2012. They were being bears.

March 22, 2013. Crosby at one hour old.

Crosby at 3 months. June 2013.

grocery shopping

lighthouse

fort