31 Days of Flashbacks: Robin's Nest

Back when we were living at "John's House" on Roosevelt in Syracuse God gave us a fun science experience right out our front window.  We noticed a couple of robins trying to make a nest on a little ledge on our porch. They were very persistent but all of their next efforts were blowing off the ledge and ending up on the floor of our porch.

 So Glenn nailed a margarine container up there to help them out.

 They laid 3 little blue eggs. We climbed up often to check out the nest.

  The eggs hatched.

 When the momma was around we mostly looked out the window.

 The kids decided to name the mommy and daddy robin "Chris and Miranda"  after our friends from Rochester, the Byrds. When they saw that there were 3 babies they named the babies Levi (after their son), Bella (after their dog), and John (they were pregnant at the time and they didn't know what the baby's name was so they just randomly picked the name John).

 It was fun watching the parents feed the babies

 and watching the babies grow

 and grow. Soon they had just about outgrown the bowl we'd given them.

 It was so much fun watching them grow and I was really hoping that they would fly away before we needed to move from John's house to our new house on Allen St.

 One day as we were watching them it looked like they were trying to psych themselves up for something and we got to watch Levi take his first flight.

 Not too long later we got to watch Bella take off. (The video of it is a bit jumpy. I was kind of excited.)

 John took a while to work up the nerve.

  Here's Bella holding onto the siding of the house next door.

 Coen, our friend from across the street came over to watch them fly for the first time.

 The kids were awestruck and had fun watching the birds take their initial flights.

  It was fun watching them teach themselves how to fly.

 It was neat to see what the nest looked like after they had all flown away.

  We saw the momma with a worm in her beak watching from the power line. Her babies had flown from the nest but she was still ready to feed them.

 It was funny to see the different places that they landed. They seemed to really like cars.

 I am so thankful for this neat opportunity to watch a robin family grow. God knew that we needed to do science while we were packing and He gave us a science experiment right on our front porch. He even arranged it for them to fly away just before we had to move. God is so good :)

31 Days of Flashbacks: Allen Street Flood

Back on April 26, 2011 the street in front of our house in Syracuse flooded.

It started as a normal day. Do school. Have friends come over for a play date. Random man tries to get you to change your electricity supplier then a torrential downpour floods your street. Shortly after all of these pictures were taken Glenn had posted a bunch of them to facebook but he has since removed most of his pictures and I realized that the Allen Street Flood had never been recorded on our blog. So today's collection of flashback pictures are from that day.

Umbrellas don't really help keep you dry in a flood

We thought it would be fun to try to float in umbrellas like Winnie the Pooh

The moms tried to get the storm drains cleared

while the kids frolicked and played

This boat floated from our yard down to the neighbor's house several doors down.

The first vehicle to try to navigate our waters was a Land Rover

I think he was having fun

Our neighbor had to carry her daughter and their stuff from their car parked far up the street on higher  ground

The corners were under construction and the deep pits made fun swimming holes (and also soaked pedestrians who didn't know they were there).

Just in case you were curious - all children pictured playing in our nasty water were the children of either medical doctors or students. Thankfully, no one got sick :)

After we got the drains cleared the city workers came by and looked so confused. They had been told that our part of the street was flooded. Fortunately for them the three women with rakes were there and took care of the problem ;)

The kids got the idea from that day that floods are a lot of fun. We had to tell them and show them pictures that, in reality, floods are no joking matter.