Parks, bowling, and birds

I had some very tired children going to bed last night. It was a full, though somewhat exhausting weekend, with a couple of late nights.

On Friday, we checked out a new park near us. It was deemed quite fun, and the clamoring to go back has already begun. (All photo credits go to TM.)

Look at this! R. actually made it up this rope ladder. Not only that, it was her choice to try. It's a lot more volition than we've seen out of this child recently.

Then that evening, our church had a bowling night. 

See me in the back there with a blue-hooded child in my arms? That's how I spent a good chunk of the beginning of the bowling. There was a little bit too much sensory overload going on. She did manage to pull it together and get some bowling in.

H. turned out to be quite a good bowler.

How did I do? Well, R. beat me. In my defense, she was using bumpers and that roller thing where you can aim the ball. And it had been years since I last went. I don't remember doing quite as poorly as I did on Friday, though. Also, it seems we bowl extremely slowly. We only managed to get through about 5 frames before our time ran out.

There was a lot of playing outside at home, of course.

And then Saturday night we all went to Shrek, the Musical at a local high school. A friend of ours was in it, and we thought it would be fun for everyone to get to see the show. It did make for another late night, though.

Sunday was more low key. After church there was relaxing, J. started reading The Two Towers to the Lord of the Rings obsessed G. and L., there was more playing at a park, and then people got to go over and play with help feed our neighbor's bottle baby goat. You know what's coming next, right? Yes, everyone is now utterly convinced that we NEED a baby goat.

I also can't leave you without the newest installment in the chicken and duck barnyard drama. The ducks are still quite the little gang, though they have now kicked it up a notch. It seems the ducks are now more comfortable moving in and out of the coop on the ramp that connects the coop with the pen. This means that sometimes, when some of the chickens have moved inside to hang out in the coop, the duck gang will get it in their ducky heads to go and roust them out. At first I thought it was because the ducks wanted the coop to themselves. First you would see the line of ducks waddling into the coop. There would be a pause for a moment or two, and then all of a sudden there would be quite a bit of quacking followed by a burst of chickens coming out of the coop and down the ramp. But no, the ducks didn't want to stay inside the coop, because they would come waddling out shortly after the chickens. It seems they just don't want the chickens in there unsupervised.

All of the birds have learned after just about a week that at the end of the day it's time for everyone to go inside the coop. For the first several days, we had to actually catch them and put them inside the coop. This was a favorite job of Y. and G. Then about mid-week, we noticed that some of the chickens had already taken themselves inside, but most of the chickens and all of the ducks (who DO NOT like to be caught and picked-up) had to be put inside. Tonight when Y. and G. ran out to put the poultry away, they discovered that all the birds were already inside and happily sorted into sleeping spots.