Bird Watching

I got a great chance yesterday morning to opening my kitchen window and pull out the 300 mm lens. I had sprinkled bird seed on the lawn and all kinds of birds showed up for the feast.

 

 Dark Eyed Junco

 The Black-capped Chickadees are the most difficult to get a good picture of. They're so fast and very wary of a long black lens sticking through an open window. :-)

 White-throated Sparrow

 Cardinal! Love these!

 The female Cardinal was too cautious to come down to the lawn.

 Yellow-rumped Warbler

I'm pretty sure this is a young Yellow-rumped Warbler.

 I think the squirrels ate most of the ornaments that we hung in our trees. That's fine with me, I like to see them in the backyard too.

However, I did see a couple of birds on them as well. That's the Chickadee.

Our Piglet

We love our little Guinea Pig, Bailey! We get him out of his cage every evening for at least a couple of hours for play and exercise time. He's stationed in the learning room, so he's usually out while Ella is working on her learning activities. He's a little sweetie and loves to play with us.

 

Snack time

 

He loves his twig balls!

Ella makes him "houses" to play in. She explains to him where his kitchen, bedroom, halls, and playroom are. He'll actually look up at her as if he's taking in all the information. :-)
 

Main Street Christmas in Downtown Holly Springs

We love the Main Street Christmas in our downtown! Ella's been talking about seeing Santa and Mrs. Claus there for the past month. This Friday was finally the night!

 

 Mrs. Claus, reading stories

 Listening to stories

 Ella, telling Santa she wants a FurReal Butterscotch pony for Christmas

The live nativity

More Christmas Crafting

Another great idea found on Pinterest, although I did customize it a bit with both girls handprints in slightly different tones of green and red ornaments.

 

Thumbprint Reindeer Ornaments

The girls and I had a lot of fun creating these thumbprint reindeer ornaments. They came out really cute!

 

Christmas Ornaments for the Birds

We used wooden ornaments, peanut butter, and bird seed to make ornaments for our backyard trees today.

 

Now we'll see if the birds like them, assuming they're the first to them. :-)

Wonderland Express

We visited the Wonderland Express at the Museum of Life & Science again this year. Emma was really excited about it.

 

 Aerial View

 This is what happens now when I ask Ella to smile. :-)