Happy Earth Day

Each year the boys and I venture down the canyon to the Ogden Nature Center for their annual Earth Day Celebration.  Despite huge crowds, we always leave with gained knowledge, a couple of planted seeds, a few leafy vine crowns, and some great memories.....


Gained knowledge of what mealworms really taste like (Jo was brave this year).  Gained knowledge of alpaca wool, honey bees, reptiles, and large birds.  Including Abe's gained and shared knowledge of one of the wing amputee eagles.  Losing most of her wing when she was very young, this extremely vocal bald eagle has spent most of her life with humans.  Because of this she has learned how to voice her opinion.  She chattered and screeched disruptively through out the entire presentation.  Abe giggle and laughed disruptively too.  What was so funny?  Abe informed me later that the bald eagle's 'chattering', was actually her sharing his laughter, apparantly they have a similar sense of humor.

Not pooping..... laying an egg.

Great memories of a shared frantic excitement over witty empty bird houses.
 

And great fun memories of this years favorite activity, a long extended stay in a field chasing and popping oversized bubbles.  Lucky Sol even got to pop two.  As for Abe, his fun was in the chase.  He clumsily ran after each bubble batch, remarkably farther than any other child, bringing only his own laughter for company (Well his laughter and his back pack he insisted on bringing, full of rubber snakes, frogs, and a calculator.).

When it was time to go, we gathered our memories and gained knowledge, and waved a goodbye to the Celtic dancers, the caged bugs and reptiles, the fake descriptive animal poop, our funny feathered friends, and the couple of frogs we'd spotted in the pond on the way in. It was only a goodbye until next year, when we'll be back again, to celebrate and wish all, a Happy Earth Day!