Day 233: Happy birthday Dev!

Dev's new friend Duke. This is what he wanted for his birthday.

Duke has papers that say he's a boxer but he look like he's half pit bull, half cheetah or tiger. He also looks like an old man rather than a seven-month old little boy.

We don't have a very good track record with pets but this one is supposed to live outside and be feed by people other than me. The kids are pretty excited about him. Now we need get him a fence built (immediately) so he doesn't have to share a play area with the kids and figure out how to pay for all the food he's going to need.

IHF: a May favorite

Comfort & Zhane during the orange dance at the school powwow. Sometimes a big brother is the best partner!

Day 232: Memorial Day

One of the many good spots Lex found on our annual Memorial Day morning Bison Range Drive. Everyone else had already headed back towards the car. I told him we needed to go to and catch up. He just walked over to the edge of the hill, sat down & said,

"No. I'm not going to. I'm just going to sit here for awhile."

He doesn't like people interfering with his plans. Especially when he has a really good one. 

My husband drove all the way to Seattle to get me flowers.

(He may have watched a few baseball games while he was there, too.)

Day 231: decorating day

Israel adding flowers to the graves of his dad's parents

Day 230: date with Lex

Lex & I spent the day together. It's not very often that we have a Saturday all to ourselves. This evening we went up to the Malt Shop for dinner. The Malt Shop has all sorts of arcade games, ice cream, and you can go wearing a straw hat, inside-out & backwards t-shirt, and rubber boots.

It's Lex's kind of place.

Azia's Report on Florida

Azia finally had to get all her research together for the project she's been working on the last few weeks. She really liked finding all sorts of information and facts, she liked exploring everything on our trip to Florida, and she liked cutting and arranging things to put the poster together. She liked cooking the strawberry bread to bring to her class, too. (I couldn't convince her the key lime pie would be a more interesting Florida choice.)

What Azia isn't a big fan of is actually sitting down and organizing her ideas and information. I guess that is always the hardest part of writing. She did eventually group things together to list all the basic information, some interesting history, and fun facts. With this project I even remembered to have her collect reference titles and websites she used while finding her information so she could put together a bibliography (and so she'd get in the habit of keeping track of where she found information) but then we forgot to actually do it. Also, I keep finding handwritten notes & information pages that didn't actually get into her folder or typed with the rest of the information that she turned in a few days ago. We have a ways to go with organization, but I did actually learn some things while I was helping her. Also it was pretty humorous to hear her try to say Tallahassee.

Here's some of her notes & poster information:

All About Florida

• Capital: Tallahassee
• nickname: The sunshine state
• motto: “In God we trust”
• flower: orange blossom
• bird: mocking bird
• reptile: alligator
• marine mammal: manatee
• tree: cabbage palmetto
• shell: horse conch
• song: "The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)"
• anthem: "Where The Sawgrass Meets The Sky"  

Stephen C. Foster wrote "The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)" in 1851. He hadn’t really ever been to the Suwannee River or even Florida. The  name just fit into his song. The Suwannee River separates the Florida panhandle from the rest of the state.  Some people thought his song was racist because in it he tries to talk like he thinks a black person would talk, so Florida decided to look for a new song. On January 11, 2008, the song Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky) was selected as the winner but the state legislature decided not to replace the old one & instead just change the words a little and make this new one the state anthem.

• governor: Rick Scott
• famous people: Johnny Depp, Ernest Hemingway, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Jason Varitek
• professional sports teams:
• Jacksonville Jaguars, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (football) 
• Miami Heat, Orlando Magic (basketball) 
• Florida Marlins, Tampa Bay Devil Rays (baseball)  
• Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lighting (hockey)
• tourist attractions: Beaches! Amusement & theme parks, swamps, Kennedy Space Center
• climate: Subtropical to tropical with a rainy season June through September. One of the most common states for tornadoes!

Historical Facts:

• Saint Augustine is the oldest European town in North America.
• The original Indian people of Florida (Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, and other Indian groups) were either killed by disease or war, captured as slaves, or they left Florida with the Spaniards. The Seminoles Indians that live in Florida now are descendants of just 300 Creek Indians who survived. Today the Seminoles are a federally recognized tribe with over 2,000 members.
• May 1539, de Soto landed nine ships with over 620 men and 220  horses at present day Shaw's Point, in Bradenton.
• Florida became the 27th  state in the United States on March 3, 1845.
• Because of its year-round mild climate, Florida was a big training center for soldiers, sailors, and airplanes of the United States in WWII.
• Hurricane Andrew was Florida's most devastating hurricane and the most expensive natural disaster in American history at that time. (1992)

Fun Facts:

• During the age of dinosaurs, the Florida peninsula was underwater. So, there are no dinosaur fossils in Florida!
• The first record of oranges being grown in Florida is by the Spaniards in St. Augustine in 1579.
• Orlando attracts more visitors than any other amusement park destination in the United States.
• Cape Canaveral is America's launch pad for space flight.
• Key West has the highest average temperature in the United States.
• Venice is known as the Shark Tooth Capital of the World
• Plant City, the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World, holds the Guinness record for the world's largest strawberry shortcake. ( a 827 square-foot, 6,000 pound cake)
• There are  six Indian reservations in the state in Hollywood, Big Cypress, Brighton, Immokalee, Ft. Pierce, and Tampa.
• Miami is the only big city in the United States that includes two national parks: Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park.

After we figured out the situation with the state songs Azia wanted to hear them, so we found copies of both online. She also wanted to bring the songs so her class could listen, so I dumped in some of our trip  photos  & the two songs to make her this movie to share with them as one of her visual aides.

____________________

Florida Strawberry Bread

Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup white sugar
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups frozen strawberries, thawed and drained
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans.
In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder and white sugar. In a separate bowl, beat together eggs and oil. Stir egg mixture into dry ingredients until just moistened. Fold in strawberries and walnuts. Spoon batter into prepared loaf pans.
Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes in pans and then move to a wire rack to cool completely.

Day 229: my boys

Everyone else was off doing fun things with friends tonight. . . Dad at the baseball game in Seattle, sister off with the girls at Gwen's,  big brother at a going away party with his friends. So, clearly the house is too big to spread out in when there are only a couple of us here. They both came into my room, told me they were staying in my bed and fell asleep about two minutes later.

Day 227: go wild, go birding

Azia won a poster contest the tribe put on this spring (Go Wild, Go Birding) and she came home yesterday with some binoculars and a bird guide book. She was pretty excited. It's actually a great prize for her because she asked me a month or so for a bird book when she couldn't find one on our shelves. (We have an insane amount of books, but I'm pretty sure I've never even looked at a bird book.) I didn't ever get around to getting her a book even though she was really into birds for about a month. I didn't even know they had this contest, but it likely the reason she was into the bird watching to begin with.  Now she's much more prepared!

You Capture: Pretty

All sorts of pretty around here lately.
Little girls enjoying the "flowers" at birthday party.

Bigger (but still little) girls enjoying a break from the softball tournament.

And just the day before, enjoying a landscape different, but just as pretty as our mountains.

Florida was sure a nice break from our endless winter.

More pretty girls and tropical birds.

And flowers.

And more pretty smiles.

Florida 2011

Tami, Sophia, Azia and one really beautiful Florida beach

I haven't found any sand in unexpected places in two or three days and my shoulders are no longer tender from a tad too much sun. Our little vacation already seems too long passed. For the last year I'd been trying to figure out how and when I could visit Tami. I finally figured out how to get away for a couple days and tickets were just a few hundred dollars, so Azia got to come along, too. I figured she would like a few days with just a few girls since she's so often buried in boys. I was right. She loved the girl time.

But, as luck would have it. Tami and Shane live right next to this:

There's not much Azia likes more than the beach.

Having friends in Florida is not a bad deal at all. Especially friends who are amazing hosts who also like to turn a visit into a vacation. They made sure we saw all sorts of cool local places. A few highlights:


DESOTO NATIONAL PARK

checking out the Spanish moss

DeSoto had cool trees, a nice beach and a walking trail. Azia actually read more of the interpretive signs and things than usual since she was collecting information for her report on Florida. So, she learned a little about DeSoto and the first people in the area. (They had life size cutouts of Native people hidden in the trees along the walking path. I don't recommend this approach to historical education and interpretive displays. . . quite freaky, especially the first time you notice one!) She also  admired the seashells and different sorts of plants.

All three of the of the girls really liked the giant tree at the entrance.

They did try to follow the rules at first, and it probably would have been responsible parenting to make them. But, have you ever seen any more perfectly climbable trees?

ANNA MARIA ISLAND

This is just a few minutes from their house and one of the nicest beaches we went to. It was so close I think we went almost every day. We may have made our hosts exceed their whole month's beach quota in just a few days, but at least Sophia felt like she was on vacation, too.

 She told me it only really felt like Florida when we were there. (Or when her grandma was.) The rest was just old regular life. That darn old regular life. . . it gets to people everywhere. Even in Florida evidently.

I love this little beach-side restaurant on the island,  Cafe on the Beach. 

Tasty food, live music, and a fun atmosphere.

This evening they even had a drum circle and line dancing. My line dancing isn't quite up to the level on display here, so I think I'll practice up and come back. I think I have four to five decades before I'm the right age to join in, so I have some time to perfect my moves. 

This beach does have some insane birds though. So aggressively insane and crazy that they are sort of fascinating to watch in a disturbing sort of way. They flock by the dozens to any scrap of food dropped. Or not dropped. They swarmed Sophia and took her bag of Cheetos while she was sitting own on the beach and had planned to have a couple. It isn't really safe to eat near them.

 This evening we were letting the girls swim until they were ready to go. Apparently, Azia will never be ready to go if she is left to decide that on her own.

She and Sophia were still swimming even after the sun went down. Even then they weren't really ready to go.

CORKSCREW SWAMP

 

It isn't the right time of year for the swamp to be really swampy, but there were still all sorts of cool trees. 

These vines made me believe I could swing through the trees like Tarazan.

But these "strangler" ones may have been my favorite.

There were more than two miles of boardwalk trails through the swamp, which was a really pretty walk.

And, we saw alligators so that was pretty cool.

Although I think the girls liked the inchworm they found more.




SANIBEL ISLAND

This was another beautiful area. It was windy the afternoon we stopped here which made the water rough, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. 

 

 It just made the waves even better.

 And luckily, it did not interfere with the important work of the baywatch babes.

After we started to get rained on, we left & headed to this restaurant for one of the best meals I've had in a long time.

I should've taken a photo of all our food before we immediately ate it all because it even looked delicious. Shane recommended the grouper & it was a good choice. With some sort of Thai sauce and an orange salsa, it's making me hungry just remembering it.  


MOTE AQUARIUM

Azia claimed my little camera and took photos throughout the trip. The aquarium was one of her favorite spots to photograph.

Sophia loved all the touch tanks. I thought she was going to try to sneak into her pocket one of the sea cucumbers. Azia wasn't real sure why she should be excited about touching sea things. Here she was getting a little more brave.

Sophia & Tami

All the girls digging for shark teeth. They all found a bunch!

Zoe & Azia trying out each other's glasses. Azia was pretty fond of Zoe, too

There is a bird sanctuary / recovery hospital right next door to the aquarium. They have all sorts of birds they are trying to get healthy, but some of the most interesting to me were all these crane that they'd made prosthetic legs for. With all the traffic and flying golf balls, it's dangerous living in Florida if you're a long, legged bird. All the dozen or so birds had different sorts of things attached to their stumps, but they all seemed to be getting around pretty well.


SIESTA KEY

Siesta Key was another great beach. More people but a beautiful area and all sorts of neat little shops and things in the area around the beach.

Of course us showing up on a perfect beach day could also have something to do with everyone else also showing up to enjoy the beach.

I was not actually enjoying the beach naked. Somehow I got there without the strap to my suit.

Me & Azia. It was really fun to have a week just with her. It's harder to get much time with just one of the kids now that everyone is getting older and we have so many crazy schedules.

BUSCH GARDENS



We got all packed up and ready to go to the waterpark and even drove all the way there and into the parking lot and then decided at the last minute to go Busch Gardens instead. It was a little overcast and cooler (still in the 80s probably, but cooler than it had been!) so it seemed a little cold and windy to spend the day in the water.

Azia wasn't sure she wanted to go to Busch since she wasn't even big enough to go on any of the big roller coasters.

But it worked out anyway because we discovered Azia does not like big roller coasters. She does not even like small ones. She went on one and was done.

Shekra. This was my favorite roller coaster of the day.

Busch Gardens is like half amusement park and half zoo so there were all sorts of animals to check out in addition to all the rides she could do.

Feeding the birds was one of the favorite parts of the day.

We also went to a strange and interesting show with some very bendy people. And a smiley juggling guy dressed as a frog. Also a young boy that was flipped into the air many times.

This was yet another highlight for Azia...a whole store of zebra-patterned things. She is completely obsessed with zebra things at the moment.

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It was such a nice break in so many ways. Not really having to be anywhere or have any responsibilities for almost a whole week. Getting to spend so much time with Azia. Just having such a dramatic shift in scenery.

I loved all the water everywhere. And the sand and bright skies and bridges and palm trees.

And instead of trucks full of wood you see things like trucks loaded with oranges.

And the best part: getting to hang out with my friend. My friend who was smart enough to marry an amazing guy who didn't mind that my daughter and I moved into his house for the week and completely disrupted their routine.

We've been friends for well over twenty years now. 

 Ever since we were about the same age as these two. 























I can't wait till we all get to get together again.