Life is moving along right now. It’s busy as we prepare not only for a new baby, but for a new gardening season. Also, it seems that the local home learner’s group is much slower in the winter, and then picks up over the spring and summer, rather than the other way around like the public school system.

One of the newest highlights has been our latest venture: beekeeping. I’ve written a lot more about that on our other blog though, as well as updates on our garden and will be writing some new posts about our chickens and ducks as well.

Meredith recently participated in an art project and then a totem pole walk with a local home learning cooperative group, where she discovered a love of (and affinity for) mapping. We may wander around and map our neighbourhood or look into geocaching or something, as she really wants to do more mapping and similar-type activities. While Meredith was in the art studio (they were doing a Mother’s Day project so I wasn’t “allowed” to know what they did), Fiona and I walked around downtown and found a spot In a park with lots of ants and flowers, and Fiona had a great time just watching the ants working. Afterwards, we all walked to a nearby playground and played until the kids were exhausted.

We also organized a co-op with the local home learning group to get some caterpillars to watch grow into butterflies, that we picked up this past week. Meredith spent the first day drawing pictures of how they look, and looking up what to expect in the chrysalis and butterfly stages and drawing those as well. They’re not very exciting yet, but Meredith does make sure to check on them every day and see if they’ve changed, and is looking forward to the butterflies.

We signed up for a 30×30 nature challenge, and so far have been able to get out every day. We do try to get out every day all year, but sometimes we forget to stop and look around us and see the nature even in busy places (like the ants Fiona found in the middle of a small city park), so I’m hoping it will give us some new ideas and motivation to get out even on not so nice days.