I'm Totally Pumped

I'm totally pumped. Now that line ages me; I think it makes me a teenager of the late 80's, early 90's. Anyway that's what I said to my family as we drove through Sandhill Wildlife Area last night. First things first, the earlier part of the day. The morning went as planned, morning jobs were done and we were reading by 8:30. During the last month of school we got away from beginning our day with read alouds. I desperately wanted to get back to it as we started out the new year in late August. Why not now? So, I announced last week that I would be reading from Little House and a picture book read aloud and they (a.k.a four charming kids) should meet me at the picnic table promptly at 8:30 every morning. We would read for 30 minutes before moving into the unstructured part of the day. Anyway, we read, played with the kitten and at 9:00 they watched Bob the Builder while I showered up. We headed to violin; Lee stayed home with dad and mowed the lawn. We picked up friend Sierra and headed home. The girls gathered eggs and then did their house chores, Lee came in to do his chores too. We all had egg salad, macaroni and melon for lunch at the picnic table and then went swimming. Ray is such a daredevil. He's not even 3 and he just floats and swims around, bobbing under and gasping for air and spitting out pond water as he comes up, but still he does it again without any tears or fear. Seems if I so much as blink he's already far enough away that I have to go into that snapping turtle, pine snake, mucky bottomed pond, too far for my comfort. The kids just laugh and call me a girl. Finally Ray was wore out from the sun so I whisked him off for a quick rinse off bath and a nap. Hot and tired everyone else came in to watch Barnyard. I made Kentucky Potato Soup, from the family cookbook, altering it slightly to fit my tastes. Yes it was 88 degrees F yesterday, but soup was on the menu and the menu is there so I don't have to think up a fabulous meal daily. I just go to the menu and make whatever it says, no matter the weather. Anyway it was delicious and with rolls, blueberries and grapes to go with it, we had a terrific summertime meal. Lots of other things happened - I watered flowers, did laundry, the kids had a tea party, they took a 4-wheeler ride, my Current order arrived via parcel post, I planted a few more annuals I picked up at 50% savings due to the hail destruction of last week and Sierra went home. We had supper and then the real fun began. DH took us to the drive-in for ice cream. There's nothing better than chocolate chip mint on a sweltering day. Only a few drips made it to the van carpeting, which is probably a record for us. DH suggested we take a drive through Sandhill; we are so glad we did that. Lee and Lou fell asleep which is really to bad because the drive proved to be quite enlightening. I'm sorry to say I didn't have my camera, though. First we saw three bucks in velvet and since they are used to people driving by, just stood still and looked at us as if we were the wildlife and they the onlookers. Then many more does as we drove the 14 mile loop, the most fascinating site was a blackbird of some sort perched on the back of a doe. Even as the doe walked around that bird hung on tight. No doubt picking ticks. Once we got to the buffalo (Ray calls them the buppala) spot we did the usual slow drive by, straining our eyes to see behind every shrubby tree and past the prairie grasses way off in the distance, hoping to see something, anything that just might be a buppala. We approached the wallowing hole and were awestruck. At least six buffalo and two young calves. They are definitely wild and didn't stick around for long, just long enough for us to get a good look at the enormous bull and darling burnt sienna (Crayola) colored youngens before they made their way over the ridge and out of sight. Wow, in the 10 years of driving through we've seen a buffalo only once and a few almosts or maybes. Then on we continued seeing a scarlet tanager, pair of swans, ducks, blue heron, black squirrel and then we came upon a truck and some people collecting and measuring turtles. We stopped to ask a few questions and hit the jack pot. The director of education and a few volunteers were happy to share what they were doing which was gathering info about turtles. At hand they had a Blandings Turtle, which was happy to pee all over the director who then wanted to hand to DH in the van. I quickly put a stop to that, but he continued to explain how they age the turtles based on the rings (just like a tree) of the scoot (spelling?) This particular female was 19 years old; they don't become mature until 15 and often live longer than 25 years, but in sand country it's hard to age them past that because the sand acts as sandpaper smoothing the scoots making it impossible to distinguish the individual rings. They were also marking the turtles using a triangular file to give the turtle a number. Then each year as they collect, they can track the turtles to see how often they lay eggs and if they frequent the same or different spots. This particular turtle was coming to the West field every other year for about 6 years now. Then he invited us to stop in to his office and talk turtles if we'd like. Now, if that wasn't enough for one evening as we finished the drive, nearly dark now we came upon a chunk of wood, but at the last minute it flew away. Definitely not wood, but a Whip-poor-will. Then another, which we stopped for in time and just watched for awhile and tried to get it to call without luck. That was the perfect ending to a perfect day. I'm totally pumped!