Just a Walk in the Park

This summer, we've been trying to do a lot of fun little day trips.  What's the cheapest day trip you can find?  Parks.  And if you're not from PA, let me tell you, you are missing out on some amazing state and county parks!  Andy grew up just down the road from where we now live, so he's quite familiar with all that the state and (local) county park systems have to offer.  So this Saturday, when Ellie let us sleep in until a quarter after 8 (seriously!) we decided to take off and visit another favorite of his.  We actually took a short trip to this park waaaaaay back when we were dating (yeah, that's what we did on dates), but haven't been back since.  Turns out that it was butterfly weekend, so it was a perfect day to go!

First, inside the HUMONGOUS nature center, there was an informational session about caterpillars and worms and how they become butterflies and moths.  There were a LOT of different live caterpillars on display that the kids were allowed to look at up close and even touch! 

Ellie, being only 2.5, got bored of that pretty quickly though, so we headed outside to take a bit of a hike and see what kinds of wildlife we could find.

Well, our hike was fun and eventful (we lost Ellie's sunglasses somewhere along the trail and Andy had to double-back for them) but we didn't see any wildlife.  Bummer.  So we came back to the nature center and sat on the lawn and ate our picnic lunch.

My cell phone camera is awful, but I loved her "pebbles" hair-do!!

And then we headed off on what the staff called a "storybook walk."  I had no idea what that was, but it turned out awesome!  

Basically, pages of a book about butterflies (The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That series) were laminated and posted at intervals along a trail.  It was SO cute!  When you came to a fork in the trail, you had to look down both options and see where your 'trail marker' was so that you stayed on the right path.  The best part is, that even our 2.5 year old got it!  We'd get to a fork and she'd look one way and then the other and then spot the pages and take off with absolute certainty that she hadn't lost the trail. There was  SO much learning going on that the teacher in me was just giddy!

The trail took us past a lot of fun places too!  Like a pond, where we finally saw...

A TURTLE!!!!

Afterwards, we took a little walk through the sensory garden, which was full of wildflowers.  And you know what that means this time of year??  BUTTERFLIES!  Here are some of my favorite shots of the butterflies that we saw...

By this time, we were thoroughly hot and sweaty, but not ready to go home yet, so we went inside to see what all the nature center had to offer.  I have to say, it is one of the nicest nature centers I've been to!  

There were more turtles to see...

This girl LOVES turtles!

And two areas that were set up specifically for kid exploration...

And then there's a whole giant room of wild game specimens, set up museum-style with habitat dioramas and everything!  Here's the last picture of the day - Ellie posing with an actual elephant tusk...

We had SO much fun on this park trip - I can't believe it didn't cost us a thing!  We will definitely be going back.  If you're anywhere near the central PA area and you haven't yet visited Nixon Park (part of the York County Park System) you are missing out.  I can't recommend it more highly - especially for homeschooling families.  It's not like a typical state park where you can bring your pets or bikes and go and explore - pets and bikes are actually not permitted on any of the trails.  This park is dedicated to wildlife and nature education - and they do a fabulous job at it!  Check out the park website here and the nature center specifics here for more information.  And no - no one asked me to give a review or for my opinion or anything like that.  I just loved it so much, I couldn't keep it to myself :-)

Gardens, Bunnies, and Fireflies, Oh My!

Over the winter, Andy decided that we just HAD to have a garden this summer.  He thought and planned and bought all sorts of seeds and picked out the perfect spot in the yard for a nice little garden.  And then when he went to borrow the tiller from his dad, he said, "Why not just have it here??"  My Father-in-Law has a wonderfully huge lot (almost 5 acres, though most of it is wooded) out in the country just 5 minutes away.  He's got lots (and LOTS) of gardening experience.  He's retired, so he's got time on his hands to help out in return for a share of the produce.  But he's also got a habit of going way overboard when it comes to food.  He grew up in a very large family, and still doesn't know how to cook for any less than 15.  It's great for church meals and holidays - not so great when it's just the four of us sitting down to dinner!  Well at least we always end up with leftovers, so we don't complain too much.  And so the garden project grew.  And it grew and grew and grew.    Andy and Ellie usually go over to help take care of it on Tuesday nights, but they really wanted me to finally come see it, so last weekend we made an evening of it...

Here's a distance shot of the garden...

Look at all that glorious corn!  My freezer is going to be STOCKED this winter!

Whatchya lookin' at?

Oooh, the world's tiniest watermelon!

Pumpkin bud.

One of Ellie's favorite pasttimes at Grampy's house is chasing bunnies.

Like I said, his property is mostly wooded, so he's got lots and lots of wildlife.  And with a garden like that, there's NO shortage of adorable little bunny rabbits.  One night she even stumbled upon a nest of babies!

Grampy's also got quite the green thumb for flowers!

As the sun went down, we decided to try some firefly catching...

Feelin' pretty excited about the hunt!

Eventually she got so good that the fireflies were catching HER!

So proud of her catch!  Don't worry, we let them go when we got home.

Hope your summer is shaping up as nicely as ours is! :-)



PS - here's a sneak peek of my next DIY project....

Schoola - Online Thrifting for the Lazy Thrifter

So it's no secret that I love thrifting.  Like, I prefer it over shopping at a regular retail store.  I can't even go to Kohls and buy something on clearance because paying $12 for a shirt is OUTRAGEOUS when I can go to the thrift store and get three shirts for that price!  I even spent part of my vacation going around to local thrift stores.  I. Love. Thrifting.  But I don't always have the time (or energy) to go hunting for good bargains.  Then the other week I stumbled (thanks to a friend's referral) on a new (to me) website called Schoola.  And it seemed too good to be true.  But then yesterday, I got this in the mail....

Allow me to elaborate.  Schoola is a website kind of like ThredUP (which I've perused, but never ordered from).  They partner with schools, hence the name.  The schools host huge clothing drives, donating the clothes to Schoola.  Schoola sells the (gently) used toddler, kids', teens', and women's clothes and accessories for reasonable thrift store prices and 40% of sales go back to the school that donated the item.  Each item that I got came from (and therefore benefited) a different school.  I'm all for schools, so this already sounded pretty good to me.  But then came the best news.

When I shopped through my friend's referral link, I got $15 in store credit to spend.  Sweet, free money!  THEN, I discovered that if I created an account (which you have to do to buy anything anyway) and set up a "collection", I got $10 more in store credit.  The Collections are basically just another way of sorting the items to narrow down what you're looking for.  You click on "collections" at the top of the home page and then click the "+ New Collection" button at the bottom of the drop-down menu.  

Then you answer some basic questions, narrowing your selection by size, color, and/or type (shirts, pants, dresses, etc.) and the website will sort through all the items to show you only what you really want to see.  Kind of an interesting way to shop and it didn't take much time in order to earn that extra $10.

When you're shopping through, you can click on the different items and it will tell you brand (if available) and size as well as the material composition and general condition.  I WISH it would tell you what things are and are not machine washable.  I don't need specific washing instructions, but I make it a general rule to never buy anything that is dry clean only because I just KNOW I'll never bother to get it dry cleaned.  But if you keep an eye on that material composition line and know that things like silk are almost always dry clean only, you can get a pretty good idea of what you're willing to get.

Anyway, when I was shopping, there was also a special 50% off everything discount code going.  And I had gotten $25 in credit.  So I got to grab myself $50 worth of clothes and here was my bill...

That's right.  Twenty cents.  Standard shipping is always free, too.  It did take about 2 weeks to arrive, so if you want it faster then you'll have to pay for an upgrade, but I'm always happy with free.  So what all did that twenty cents get me, you ask?  Check it out...

Yes, that's right, I got myself SEVEN shirts for twenty cents.  That's better than any other thrift store I've ever been to and I didn't even have to get dressed and leave the house!  Now, I will caution you, like many thrift stores, Schoola does not accept returns.  I also make it a rule to never order clothes from an online source that doesn't have a physical location to return to, but I decided to risk it on these since they were very-nearly free.  I figured that if something didn't fit, I would re-donate it to my local thrift store (which benefits my community) and just cut my losses.  But IT ALL FITS.  Now, granted, I picked pretty safe and forgiving pieces, but still.  I'm pretty stoked about it.

So, I really, highly recommend that you check it out.  Like I said, there are clothes for everyone from toddler up through mom.  Sorry, no men's clothes though.  It's hard thrifting for men anywhere because they wear their clothes until they wear out, so they're no good for anything but rags.  There are clothes for boys from toddler through "school age" though.  Just like any thrift store, you've got to search for the gems and realize that designer clothes are going to come with a much higher price tag.  There was a toddler skirt that I LOVED for Ellie, but they wanted $40 for it!  Then I read a little closer and it turns out it was a $120 skirt originally and made of silk, so probably dry clean only.  After a little research I found out that the company is based in California, although they are starting to partner with schools all over the country, so the styles of clothes are quite varied.  No worries though!  There are plenty of reasonable things for a simple gal like me - I got brands like Old Navy and One World as well as brands that you find at Kohls and Penny's.  

And, the VERY best part... it didn't smell AT ALL!  If you're an experienced thrifter, you know what I'm talking about.  There's a distinctive "thrift store" smell that clothes acquire.  I don't know how they get it, but they all do.  And sometimes it can take several washes to get it all out.  None of these shirts, despite being donated all from different schools, had any kind of a smell to them.  I still washed them anyway, of course, but I was really impressed with their condition!

Ok, so, you can get $25 of free clothes, with free shipping, and it benefits schools.  What are you waiting for??  Click through this link and set up an account to get your $15 credit and then create your own shopping collection for an extra $10.  It's that easy.  And if you can't manage to spend the whole $25 or don't want to risk going over and having to pay twenty cents like I did, you can spend under and get it completely free.  (not like retail stores where you have to spend at LEAST $10 to get the $10 off - $9.99 doesn't count!)  And when you place your first order, I'll get a little credit back to my account, too.  So I'm not doing this for totally selfless reasons, but it's still a really good deal that I wanted to share with you all.  Because we ALL deserve some free stuff sometimes!  Happy shopping!!

PS- Schoola didn't ask me to write this review, although I do get store credit when you shop through the referral link.

Marvelous Mother's Day

Caution: This post contains a boat-load of pictures.  You might want to go do something productive while it loads.

Mother's Day was like a month ago, but I've discovered that I'm not a fantastic blogger and am just now getting around to telling you anything about it.  We've kind of fallen into a routine of doing things for celebratory occassions (like Mother's Day, Anniversary, Etc.) instead of giving things.  Christmas and birthdays excluded, of course!  So anyway, we decided to go to a (somewhat) local state park and have a play day.  This was a common past time of ours before we had Ellie, but we had kind of stopped doing it since she came around.  It was so fun and refreshing to get out and explore again!  Plus, Ellie got to go on her very first hike and loved it.  Fun for the whole family!  So what made it special for me, as my mother's day 'gift'?  I was told I was allowed to take as many pictures as I wanted.  Does my man know me well, or what?!  Anyway, here's just a few of the several hundred that I took...

Picnic Lunch

Just a little swingset fun!

Slide hair!

Climber girl!  No hesitation, no help, just straight to the top!

Family picture next to the historical furnace.

She saw some guys on top and decided we needed to climb up there too!  (There was a ramp on the backside)

Then she saw a trail and took off hiking toward this waterfall!  That one's got no fear whatsoever.

Treasures

Family picture by an old log cabin

Time for a creek hike!

Picking up rocks to make splashes.

Came home to the cherry trees dropping all their petals.

Mommy, raining flowers!!

At church on Sunday, every woman and girl in the congregation was given a carnation and Ellie decided to give hers to her Grammy McDee.  This was her first visit and it was really special for both of them...

Coming up soon, our anniversary/family birthday adventure!