Muddy Boots

Can you tell what we've been getting into?

Desert Boy's Experiment

 The other evening, Desert Boy told me, "I have an idea for an experiment. Can we do it?"

Uh, oh, I thought. What are we getting ourselves into now? But I try to be supportive of his scientific endeavors, so I asked him for details.

"We put some baking soda and vinegar into a bottle and put a balloon on top of it and see how a gas makes it inflate. I saw it on Magic Schoolbus."

Well, that sounded like an okay experiment to me. So we gathered our ingredients and decided the sink would be a good place to do the experiment. I didn't know how much baking soda or vinegar, so I took a guess, and told him to put two teaspoons of baking soda into the bottle. Then we poured a 1/4 cup vinegar into a measuring cup. As Desert Boy poured the vinegar, I got ready with the balloon as quick as I could.

 Sure enough, the balloon started inflating! We all were entranced, wondering how big it would get.

The balloon got slightly bigger than you can see in the photo above and stayed that size for about 10 or 15 minutes. It was such a successful experiment, we had to do it again! Next time we may make it more scientific and have him record how much of the ingredients we put in and how big the balloon gets and try out some variations. In the meantime, I'm just happy that it wasn't a messy experiment, and Desert Boy is happy because the experiment worked. Hurray!

Sand Hollow Aquatic Center

 While we were in St. George last weekend, we had one nice day and one rainy day. We headed out to explore one of the fabulous trails in St. George on the nice day. This trail started at the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center, which is near Santa Clara. We were the only ones on the trail and enjoyed the great views. It's one of the shorter ones, about a mile long. When we got to the end, Desert Boy was amazed that I wasn't going to have him go any further and that all we had to do was turn around and go back!

 I liked the signs, and we talked a couple minutes about safety in the desert.

Then it was time to go to a destination the kids craved: an oasis in the desert.

 Being desert rats, we always are eager to find some water, especially when we can recreate in it. So we headed to the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center.  It has a very interesting construction that covers two separate pools, a lap pool that the swim teams can use (and that is slightly cooler) and a recreation pool with a variety of fun things (and that is slightly warmer). The light-colored roof and windows made it so they don't need lights during the day. Another feature I liked was the family locker room.

 When we walked into the pool area, our eyes immediately went to the water slide. You walk up two flights of stairs to get to the top, then have a relaxing ride down. The slide discharges you into four-feet deep water with quite a current, which made for a little extra swimming challenge for Desert Boy.

 I loved that Desert Girl could go down with me on the slide, as long as she wore a life jacket. In fact, they make all kids 3 and under wear a life jacket while in the pool area.

 Desert Girl also loved a slide that was a little more her size--the frog. She even got brave and went down face first, even though she ended up with a face full of water every time.

 Some water bubblers made for fun entertainment.


Desert Boy spent lots of time over at the lily pads. They had ropes attaching them to the bottom of the pool, but they moved quite a bit. A cargo net overhead helped provide a little extra stability as one tried to get across them without wiping out. (It was slightly reminiscent of the TV show Wipeout.)

 Desert Girl even gave it a try. (Isn't she getting big?!)

We spent a couple very enjoyable hours at the aquatic center. Desert Boy wanted to go back the next day, but we had other plans. Nevertheless, we will be back!

New Food: Quinoa

So like a zillion other people, I made a New Year's resolution to eat better. In my case, I want to cut back on processed foods and eat more real foods (and with Hostess going out of business, my resolution is already slightly easier).

Recently, I purchased some quinoa. I had read it was a yummy grain. Now "read" is a key word here, because if I had "heard" quinoa pronounced, I probably wouldn't keep mispronouncing it. You see, this is an ideal spelling bee word in the final challenge round, because it's pronounced "keen-wah." And for the life of me, I can not remember that pronunciation. So I keep mispronouncing it, but fortunately there aren't too many "keen-wah" snobs out in this neck of the woods. Ahem, I mean isolated desert valley.

Anyways, I found a recipe for quinoa and made it last night. And I have to say, I really like it. Before I get to the recipe, let me tell you a little more about quinoa. It comes from Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, and Ecuador, up in the high country. It doesn't need much precipitation and it can survive freezing temperatures. As I read this off the package, my husband and I were both thinking--wow, maybe we should grow this in our garden! But then we got to the part that the quinoa seeds have a hard coating of saponins that is difficult to remove. Okay, back to buying it.

It was domesticated 3,000 to 4,000 years ago (how did those people get the coating off?). It's high in lysine, calcium, phosphorous, and iron. The Incas considered the grain to be sacred and called it chisaya mama, or "mother of all grains." Then came the dang conquistadores, who scorned that Incan foodstuff and even forbade them to cultivate it and made them plant wheat. Eventually the quinoa came back into favor, and over recent years its popularity has spread. The price of quinoa crops has increased substantially. According to Wikipedia, in 2011 a ton of quinoa cost an average of over $3000, compared to a ton of wheat at $340.

I can understand why it's popular, it's delicious. The salad you see above came from a recipe at 100daysofrealfood. I look forward to eating more of it.

Have you tried quinoa? What recipes do you like?

St. George Birding Festival 2013

For the past ten years, St. George has held a birding festival. It's the last weekend of January, which means it's a great escape from the snow and cold of more northerly latitudes. I've wanted to go for several years, but with little kids, I didn't know how I could pull it off. Fortunately, last year I asked my mother-in-law if she would help watch the kids this year, and she said yes.

The festival was held from Thursday evening to Saturday evening. We drove down after school on Thursday. On Friday, I took Desert Boy with me on a shorter bird trip. Since he was missing a day of school, I figured he should do something educational.

Bird field trips are fun for several reasons. First, the leader is usually very knowledgeable and you can learn all sorts of things about birds that you never knew. This was definitely true for our trip. At our first stop we saw the huge gaggle of Canada geese out on a pond that's in the first photo of this post. Kevin found the lone greater white-faced goose in the group, and put his scope on it for us. Plus he made sure we all saw the canvasbacks and ruddy ducks and explained that the ruddy ducks only get the strange-looking blue bills during breeding season. 

Second, the leader knows the local bird hotspots. You see cool birds not only on the field trip, but know where to go when you return. You'll see a spot below to which I'd like to return.

Third, it's fun to meet other birders. Often people of all levels go on the bird trips, and it's fun to find out more about how people got into birding and if they've seen anything interesting lately.

 This is what I hoped Desert Boy would be doing for the field trip. I taught him how to use the binoculars and helped focus them. He looked through a few times.

 This is what he preferred to do, though--gather materials for a little boat made of bark.

He thought the pampas grass was cool and wanted to add that to his collection.

I enjoyed seeing an array of birds, including some that I haven't seen around here for several months, like the northern mockingbird, seen above.

Female and male house finches cooperated for us by sitting still on top of a tree so that everyone could see the differences in plumage.

 One of our locations for this trip was Halfway Wash, which has some nice riparian habitat. It's easily accessible, with a paved trail along it. This is part of St. George's extensive trail system, something I'd like to get to know better.

 Desert Boy found some friends, and they had a wonderful time digging in the dirt, gathering materials, and even pretend fishing. When I commented to another mom that Desert Boy wasn't getting as excited about birds as I had hoped, she reminded me that he was getting some good outside time. And much to my relief, he managed to keep his feet dry (especially since I had forgotten to bring any other footwear for him).

I saw two new birds for me: the greater white-faced goose and a quick glimpse of a verdin, a small bird just larger than a bushtit with a yellow head.

The next day I had planned on going on a five-hour birding trip, but early-morning rain discouraged me (plus I figured the kids might get a little too rambunctious sitting inside), so I changed to a three-hour birding trip to some other locations. Local birders from my valley happened to be on this trip, too, and it was fun to get to do some birding with them.

 Our first stop was at a golf course. It was beautiful, despite the overcast skies, with ponds and wetland areas. It all made wonderful bird habitat.


We got some good looks at ruddy ducks.


A song sparrow also let us get quite close. With the spot in the middle of its chest and a streaked breast, it's one of the easier sparrows to identify.

We stopped at several other parks in the Washington area, and found cool things at each: a hummingbird (probably a Costa's), American wigeons, a better view of a verdin, and another new species for me: Abert's towhee. Abert's towhee doesn't migrate and is found in a rather small area of the desert Southwest.

The rain started a couple hours into the trip and stayed steady through the rest of the day. It wasn't ideal for birdwatching, but the birds are still out there in the rain, so they can be found, it just takes more effort.

In the afternoon, I took the kids back to Tonaquint Nature Center for the bird house-making activity. Home Depot had donated bird house kits.

 Desert Boy couldn't wait to get started.

 He did most of his bird house all by himself.

 Desert Girl was lacking a nap and wasn't so enthusiastic.

 Such concentration! Fortunately he didn't hammer any digits.

 A lot of people turned out for the activity.

Desert Girl cheered up as the birdhouse neared completion.

Success! We'll put these in the yard and see if we can entice any birds to take up residence.

We'll definitely be going back to the St. George Bird Festival. There were so many programs we didn't have a chance to attend, plus field trips to many more areas. It's only $5 for adults and free for kids for the whole festival. And even though it was rainy, it was nearly twenty degrees warmer than home, and for me, that makes it an extremely nice winter getaway!