Arts, Crafts, Raptors and Snakes

My photo organization system has been evolving as I take more and more pictures and have less and less time to deal with them.  While I was planning to share some pictures from our big mid-week trip to Teton and Yellowstone, I found this backlog of photos from last week's arts, crafts and raptor adventures.  As Catherine was recovering from her illness we did some hanging around the house and preparing for fall with some pumpkin playdough.  Matthew and I made some owls while Catherine concentrated heavily on shoving eyes into her mouth the playdough.

 Mostly she's in a phase where she likes to dump things out and put them back in so we did a lot of that.

 And of course we enjoyed some snacks:

 Matthew meanwhile prepared for picking up Uncle Ed and "Gorgina" by shoving his clothes in these little bags and carrying them around to the "airport".

 And of course there was lots of playing around with daddy:

 A friend passed along this article last week on Facebook which moved me to tears and reminded me to jump in the picture a little more often, so I took one of me and baby girl when she woke up from nap:

 On Saturday we headed up to Raptor Fest, like we had last year and the year before.  Matthew was kinda excited by the snow on the ground:

 It was "yummy"

 This is the first year Matthew has really been interested in some of the activities besides checking out the owls, so first we measured our wing span:

 And Catherine just hung out in the backpack:

 Matthew then got his face painted.  He picked out an American Kestrel.

 And of course we met up with our old friends from Raptor Conservation:

And this little guy inside:

And enjoyed a chilly but nice day on the mountain:

 In preparation for Ed and Georgina's visit it was time to end our science experiment and get the snake out of the guest bathtub.  We took one last measurement, though I had an overtired toddler on my hands who was unwilling to photograph the moment:

 But enjoyed dancing around with the snake:

 And with out snake tracing:

On Monday we picked up Ed and Georgina from the airport and headed off on our next adventure To be continued . . . . . . . . . . . 

Saturday Adventures

This weekend we woke up and Matthew helped to make breakfast. He likes to whisk the eggs.

And I when I wasn't looking, he stole my spoon. He really enjoyed it. Uncle Matt and Uncle Ed may be impressed and the rest of you may be grossed out. The spoon was the one I had used to spoon the bacon grease out of the pan and he had a hard time giving it up. He doesn't care for the texture of bacon right now, but I think he's pretty keen on the taste.

Later we went to the Raptor Fest up at the Ski Area. We met this great horned owl and red-tailed hawk who were imprinted by a families that "rescued" them and could not survive in the wild.

Matthew enjoyed it, pointing out the "Ai's" over and over. Right now anything that moves is an "ai" and even the cats have been demoted from "ats" to ai's"

And speaking of things that move, a pic of little man and his shadow from earlier in the week.