Earth Day Activities

During the last week of April, James travelled to Peru for work. He had a great time sightseeing (as well as attending meetings and doing presentations, of course!). While he was gone, the boys and I managed to keep ourselves quite busy and we had a lot of fun together.

The last weekend in April there were many Earth Day activities going on. On the Saturday, we went to Everett Crowley Park with Gramma to do some tree planting. Everett Crowley Park was once Vancouver's dump (until the late '60s) and is now a really nice park. However, when we went to do the planting, we were told that our job would be to take out some of the many blackberry bushes in the park. That sounded like a lot of work! So we skipped the planting and just walked around the park, checking out the many activities going on.

The first thing we found was the face painting. While in line, Daniel saw that another boy was getting his face painted as Spiderman. Hmmm...I wonder what Daniel chose to have painted on his face? Adam didn't really care, so I just told the girl to do whatever was easiest. It ended up being a really cute bee.

Next, we found some planting that was more our style. The boys each got to fill their own pots and plant a few pea seeds. Daniel's ended up going mouldy and never grew. But Adam's has flourished in our backyard. Daniel has kind of adopted Adam's plant and makes sure to water it every day.

Then we did some arts and crafts. Daniel and Mommy made a beautiful pen holder by gluing tissue paper onto old yogurt containers. Daniel now keeps his "treasures" in it. (I think his treasures now include some shells, a keychain and a tag from LaSenza!) Adam and Gramma made a very pretty tissue paper flower.

We wandered around some more and checked out the many reptiles that were on display. I can't remember what this guy was called but Daniel wasn't scared at all and held it on his shoulder. I was surprised that Gramma was even brave enough to visit with one of the snakes.

Although it was a bit chilly, we still had a really nice day. Daniel, unfortunately, wasn't his usual happy self, though. He was missing his dad because James had just left the day before. That's why Daniel isn't smiling in any of these pictures.

The next day, Sunday, was our neighbourhood cleanup (called Queensweep because we live in Queensborough). The boys and I headed out bright and early with our wagon and our garbage bag to pick up some of the garbage we found on the streets. They were so into it! They loved finding all the garbage - Daniel kept commenting on how lazy people were to be leaving their garbage on the ground! After about half an hour, our bag was full so we headed to the community centre for the Earth Day celebration. Anyone who picked up garbage was able to get a barbecue lunch and Tim Horton's doughnuts. There were a few games and a garage sale going on as well. The theme of this year's Queensweep was "frogs" so there was a woman teaching kids about frogs. The boys got to paint wooden frogs that would later be hung on a wire fence near the playground. They also got to make their own frog headbands!

After we were done, we headed over to the playground, where Daniel discovered the "spider web." Both he and Adam love that thing and Daniel was quite a natural at climbing it. He climbed pretty much to the very top, his first time. Of course, I was on the ground having a heart attack. But, since I very clearly remember climbing to the top of the monkey bars and standing on top with no hands, and most likely giving my own mother a heart attack, I guess I had it coming!