Bee Caves Park

Today the kids and I went to the Bee Caves City Park to check it out for future use for other  homeschool events.  It is an awsome park that they are still in the process of building...it has only been open to the public since October.  There are original playscapes, lots of walking trails, pavillions with picnic tables, bathrooms that are actually well maintained with soap AND towels, a limestone ampitheatre that has percussion insturments for interactive play, lots of native trees have been planted, great basketball courts, etc. etc.  Gosh, it is amazing what a lot of money can do.  We will certainly be returning very soon.  Tomorrow we have classes here for art, music, gardening and some Valentines Day decorating to do for next week's LAHAC meeting here.  Off I go to feed animals and kids - maybe Tony will make it home in time to sit down with us...then again, it is almost Spring and his work has more than doubled.  Hope everyone is enjoying their day as much as we did.

fishy

I saw a fish while I was swimming.  It was eating algae in the water.  It was rushing down the river to the lake.

Brownie walking on (frozen) water

frozen morning

OK - today is officially the coldest day since we moved to Texas with a morning temp. of 14 degrees farenheit at 6am.  I didn't manage to get above freezing until about 11am.  Today was beautiful however.  Tony and I went on an early morning stroll with the dogs and later the kids joined us when Saturday morning cartoons got old.  Here are some shots.

REALLY COLD

You know that when the nightly news is talking about the upcoming cold-front coming in as their top story, that you might want to pay attention.  The wind is gusting up to 45 mph here and coming in from the North.  This morning, Tony and I have been winterizing a bit including putting up a new wall on the goat shelter, recovering the hen house and making sure that the dogs have warm spots picked out in their new pen.  Mostly they just go under the house and tuck themselves directly under the space heaters.  Healer is a mountain dog and has been in colder weather than this, but she is getting older. 

The kids spent all afternoon outside yesterday, thankfully.  The next few days are going to be spent indoors greatly.  Basically this means a lot more baking and crafting, game playing and long baths.  In our extra-small house, the bathroom is the only spot for isolated alone time and the warm water proves to be very calming.  Sounds good right about now...think I may take a soak soon.
I will be back on later to post a bunch of new photos.  Amazing stuff going on in nature around here.