Thursday, December 17, 2020

A Weekend of Trees

Spending a full Saturday in December outside feels like a full weekend! We spent the day in nature, hiking amongst the now bare trees, cutting down our Christmas tree at the tree farm, and spending our evening decorating it. A few years ago, we had the picturesque experience of cutting down our Christmas tree as it snowed. While that was all fine and dandy, and it's a memory that sticks out in the mini's minds, we really couldn't have asked for a better day this year! It was warm, but crisp. Sunny, but not enough to need sunscreen. 

We fueled up for our adventure with breakfast from Buzzard Billy's. I've always enjoyed the food at Buzzard Billy's, but this year (aka: during the pandemic), we've order from them about once a month. They have a great family meal bundle that we love. Their breakfast was just as good and decently priced. Our orders included mini donuts, chicken and waffles, two omelet breakfasts, and biscuits and gravy. All of it was wonderful and flavorful.



After breakfast, we bundled up and hiked at Banner Lakes at Summerset State Park. You may remember that we attempted to hike all of the trails there this spring and failed terribly (read about that here). This time around, we did the simple river trail, walked around one of the lakes (more of like a large pond), and climbed a few of the dirt hills along a trail. We were much more successful in our hiking endeavor this time around!




A certain dog broke the ice around the edge of the lake (by digging) and took himself for a dip. Then, we had to find grass for him to roll around in because he's certain that helps to dry him off, when, in fact, it just makes him dirty.

After hiking for a good long time, we drove to Walnut Ridge Tree Farm to pick out this year's Christmas tree. This is our yearly tree place, but we love it even more since it's one of the few that actually allow dogs! Zeus was thrilled to be there because he happened upon a turkey leg! I didn't know what it was until I reached down to get the "stick" out of his mouth and realized it had legs. Besides the turkey leg, it was a rather uneventful visit. We found our tree quickly, the boys took turns with the saw to cut it down, the youngest mini insisted on pulling the cart, but had issues with it. Nothing surprising. Afterward, we grabbed a late lunch from Funaro's Deli in Indianola, Ia and came home to eat and decorate the tree.






They just had to play with the tree sap....and then wondered why their fingers were sticky.





Apples and soda. They rarely get soda, or any other sugary beverage, but they got to pick out cans to have with their lunch. It took them the rest of the day to finish them up.

Sunday's are for preparing for the week ahead. It usually takes me a few hours to go over lesson plans, tweak lesson plans, print worksheets, oraganize everything, and hand it all out to the appropriate mini/group of kids. The hardest part of homeschooling/preschooling/virtual learning is being prepared and making sure I have everything needed. It's somewhat exhausting, but I tend to pile a lot of our big days at the beginning of the week, so that our end of the weeks are short and sweet.

This scene got me. I peaked into the youngest's room as she was getting ready for bed and saw she had laid out socks in case her feet got cold while she slept.