My Bird by GroovyGirl

On New years one of my plans was to buy a bird. I was able to get one that same day! My brother and I had already picked out the name Kiki (named after the bird in the Enid Blyton children's book series). As you can see from the pictures, Kiki is a cinnamon opaline violet parakeet. Kiki was unusual because he became tame the first day I had him.


Now he is incredibly tame for a parakeet, letting me pet him on his back. But he is young. I am not sure of his exact age but I know he is under 3 months old (a bar head). I am hoping to teach Kiki how to talk and do tricks soon. Kiki is pretty quiet, but some times he squawks to get attention. He is crazy about millet spray. So far Kiki has been a delightful pet and he is very friendly.

Christmas

For some reason I did not take any "formal" Christmas Day (or even Christmas week) photos of the children. There are a few pictures of them opening their stockings and presents but nothing with them all Christmas-fied...

But here are some photos from the week of Christmas.

One tradition we try to follow each year is to spend an evening looking at Christmas lights and then go to DQ for a Blizzard. We reversed things this time and had a Blizzard first (the DQ has a fireplace so we enjoyed sitting directly in front of it) and then went looking at lights. Usually we do the lights and Blizzards on Christmas Eve but since we were going to be at the farm on Christmas Eve – we decided to do it all the Wed. before Christmas.

One of our favorite light displays is Dan’s Emerald Forest. His front yard is completely landscaped with a train scene…he hands out candy to the kids and on the weekends (which we missed out on this time) there is hot apple cider and hot cocoa.

We headed up to the farm Thursday afternoon. That turned out to be a great idea since there was a lot of snow that fell in the wee hours of Friday morning. When we looked out the window in the morning – the farm was covered in a beautiful white blanket of snow!

One of the first things on the mind of the children was to go play in the snow! The snow was of the perfect variety for making snowballs and snowmen. The kids and mom first went sledding out in the cow pasture. Going down was fun – climbing up wasn’t so much…but the exercise was good for those of us (well one of us) that needed to burn off some Christmas Holiday calories.

Of course everything didn't look so pure and white after the top layer of snow was lifted!

After our sledding adventure – the kids played outside for about another hour and a half! Even though it was snowy – the temperature was mild. They came in soaked but happy!

A Little Catch Up

Well as usual I'm behind on my posting - but better late than never...if I don't post some photos of the kids now they won't be recognized by their Canadian kin when we visit this summer.

The girl wearing her father's farm coveralls as the snow arrived before I purchased her a new pair of ski pants.

These are a couple of photos from our first "real" snow. Maybe just a smattering of snow by Manitoba standards - but enough snow for the kids to have fun in.