I'll have a starling shall be taught to sing nothing but 'Mortimer'

~Shakespeare

We have had a flock of starlings haunting our bird feeding station these past few days. Our Song and Garden Birds of North America calls these birds the "aggressive bane of songbirds", but they have not seemed to bother our goldfinches and certainly our resident flicker holds her own. Also from reading we found these birds were first introduced in America in 1890 by a group that planned to introduce all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare into the United States. Certainly they succeeded in the case of the starling, which now covers the entire continent and whose numbers are so high that they endanger air travel and mob feedlots. One way to control them? Southerners have been known to eat them. "Wrap the birds in bacon, spit them, roast in a hot oven, serve on toast."

I think I prefer to simply laugh at their ridiculous antics and pompous strutting. Really, they are quite entertaining.

daddy gos to woshingtin.

the tran.

the tran coming.

us wating fo the tran.

the tran stashon.

bees.

we had fun boing papas har.

Spring must surely be on its way

Yesterday: and today:

look at this little dare devil Gabriel! He can do anything in his tea cozy hat!

A sure sign of Spring; Joshua got his buzz cut

Good Morning Sunshine

Can you tell that I LOVE the way the sun shines into our house in the morning? It makes for such a cheery start to the day and my cup of morning tea seems so much more luxurious when basking in the sun. Here is Gabriel wearing my tea cozy (his hat):

A Snowy Boxerwood

Greenhouse thermometer read 80!

Spring in the greenhouse:

Up in the Haiku House:

Dale's Creek:

the play kitchen:

On our way

We're on our way to Denver again! Thank you Suzy! We are already VERY excited. Joshua made a countdown of the days and decorated each number with happy little folk. Eight is his favorite and I am rather partial to eleven. We leave March 15 ( I know, beware the ides of March!)

WOOHOO!

Big excitement in the Yoder home! Our car is back out front looking shinier than ever! They even vacuumed out the inside which we had left pretty trashed. Just one more stop to have it inspected tomorrow a.m. Let's hope it passes!

We had a grand time riding around in it this afternoon, just to Ella's gymnastics and Kroger, but my it was nice to be OUT. The boys and I lingered in the grocery store, laughing our way down every aisle. Giddy would be an appropriate word to describe our mood this evening.

Remember those lovely morning shadows from a few days ago? Those branches have grown hearts!

This morning we woke up to fresh Spring leaves!!!!!

A highlight from this evening:

While I was getting dinner out Joshua was designing a dollhouse on pbskids.org. He began shouting from upstairs, "Mommy! You have to come see my house!" Obviously very proud. I came up to see and laughed my head off! He had designed a bathroom with three toilets (one for himself and Ella and Gabriel) and every room had a refrigerator in it!