New Years Eve

The last day of the year....the last day of the New Yorker calendar from past years...2018, 2019 and 2020. Will be weird to have just one calendar page tomorrow.

Today was a day off for me, so I was able to help with the craft right away. We needed festive glasses for tonight.

After the craft, we went out to the Pope Farms School. If he didn't like the playground, at least we could go sledding.

We stayed at the playground the entire time. I am looking through the slide toward him at the steering wheel play area.

The periscope at the very top was fun.

Here are our New Years glasses.

Lastly, the Madison Children's Museum dropped a pumpkin to celebrate the end of 2020. Here goes the pumpkin off the top of the museum!

 

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Yesterday was the perfect snowstorm. By the time we woke up, all the snow was gone and even the snowplows had gone through. 

 In the late morning, we had a chance to go on the snowhill.

Picked up one of my favorite childhood books at the library today. 

Also got a chance to figure out the names of all the dinosaurs. They certainly know about a lot more dinosaurs now than they did 30 years ago.

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The demand for today was a new playground. Today's playground is called the "orange playground with brown rocks." The slides are quite slippery in the wintertime.

They did have a nice teeter totter. We always appreciate those. 

This was our make believe movie theater. He is fixing the screen now.

With all the snow, the birds might want some food.

They finished up some of their rocks by putting fancy decals on them.

Then the evening went off the rails when we were Googling dinosaurs and found a way to use augmented reality to put them inside our house.

Snow is starting to pile up outside. Looks like it will be wiser to go to sleep earlier and then get up with the snowblower around 6AM.

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Today we painted some rocks. I think these are fancy rocks that are meant for painting. The goal of today is to create the base color. Tomorrow or some other day we'll finish with a fancy design. I think there is some connection where you put the rock somewhere in public and the finder posts it on Instagram. More to come on this craft.

Today we are practicing our snowshoeing. There's going to be some snow coming on Tuesday night into Wednesday. We need to be ready!

Here's what's headed our way. I'm hoping for closer to the 9".

We finished all books of the Magic Bone series....oh, almost. Here's the one we finished today.

I just looked it up, seems like we are missing the two books on the right. This is one of the pandemic surprises that we got into this book series.

At night we checked out the moon.

And did a puzzle.

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Might be our last picnic of 2020....if you can call eating in your car a picnic.

Near the University Bay next to the hospital is a birding hotspot. That is where we went this morning. We quickly realized that many other people also look for birds here as we saw lots of vehicles and runners/walkers drop by for a visit.

Here is our indoor picnic.

 My new binoculars work well for taking photos...somehow they sync up with your phone. I haven't figured that part out just yet, but I found a way to take a photo of some tundra swans, Canada geese and some coot. There is ice for a couple hundred yards. Some of the birds were on the ice, others in the cool water.

On the way to Observatory Hill, we drove past the natatorium they are tearing down. Lots of old infrastructure.

Walking around at the top of the hill.

Lake Mendota and Picnic Point

Standing on the steps of the historic College of Agriculture and Life Sciences building. We were thinking that at some point in time some classes from the Farm Short Course were held here.

Playing the match the uppercase and lowercase letters game.

And the matching footwear.

At night, we tried out the shower head for shampooing and washing his hair. The verdict: mixed....we'll see what happens a few days from now.

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Some quick photos from today. For the most part, a lot of playing with all the toys.... even the ones that are not toys.

So far though, I think he likes the Peppa Pig treehouse, but all the characters, the Winnie the Pooh figurines, dinosaurs, nutcracker and others use the house.

With all that, we still needed to go outside. For the past two days, he's wanted to go to the "tractor place." We went there today.

Here is his pretend restaurant. He served some make believe hot chocolate.

This variety of sedum still has some color left.

There are still a few tractors in the shed, but most equipment is all put away and inside somewhere else.

Christmas Day

As we woke up on Friday morning, we found this puppet theater set up downstairs.

 Other highlights were some small toy dinosaurs and this Peppa Pig Treehouse.

Some John Deere overalls from Grandma and Grandpa. We need to get back to driving tractors again.

For Mom and Dad, the theme between us ended up being bird-themed. Since 2020 involved a lot of time outside, we did our best to learn about birds. I got a bird book and birding binocular, she got a game about birds.

After all the unwrappings were done, a Christmas selfie.

After lunch, we went for a quiet walk at Greenway Station. Very few people and hardly any traffic. The holiday music echoed across a vacant parking lot.

we took the same type of photo on Easter

walking across a quiet Deming Way

Near 4PM, we finally worked in Christmas Mass. He found a way to put the Christmas lights on his puppet theater.

Christmas Eve

Blogger doesn't do a good job of allowing mobile upload of photos, so I'm uploading photos from Christmas Eve today (Christmas Day). Note, most of these images are not mine. 

First up was a performance of Mele Kalikimaka. It is the capstone project of the year of the ukulele.

Looking at the collection of the nutcrackers.

Here is the first run down toward the tree after the Christkind rang her bell.

Opening the first present, Winnie the Pooh and friends.

Playing some carols...

Opening presents and being silly.

Getting a close look at the nativity.

Wearing some comfy new pajamas.