Feliz Sabado!

Today was an awesome Sabbath! I went to church, and when I got there (almost late!), I found out that I was supposed to be a greeter! Oh well whatever.

On the way home, we saw smoke coming from a mountain! It was a big fire in the woods on the mountain. Then we drove by and as we did, a plane flew over the fire, and dumped a lot of water on it! It was the first time I've ever seen something like that; it was really cool! My dad said they started the fire on purpose, so they could burn away the brush and prevent accidental fires in the summertime. And also so that some person could try out the plane that dumped the water to make sure it was still working fine.

After we got home, I listened to all my favorite Chirstian radio dramas and talked on the phone until my dad got home. At about 4:00 or 5:00 we left for this park that is close to us, the Ountalaunee Park. It's a big piece of wooded and ponded (is that a word?) and swamped land. When we first went to it, it was a new park and pretty crumby. They were still building these buildings (look at the pictures). The college students are fixing it up and building a lot of cool stuff. They rebuilt some cabin and fort that used to be there. The fort was called Fort Everett. The cabin and the fort were locked, both the doors and the gate to the fort, so I just peered through the windows of the cabin. It looked really nice inside, I wouldn't mind living there, lol! The bed looked really comfy, not; it was made of ropes! The fort, well, I looked through the cracks, but my brother crawled under the fence! I could have fit, but I didn't want to get in trouble, but most of all, I didn't want to get my jeans dirty!

So, after we were done looking at the buildings, I ran over to look at the ponds. They have three little ponds, which would be nice if they could get some more of the cattails and algea out and build a newer bridge. I was stading on the bridge looking for frogs and fish. I saw some frogs, and a few minnow-like fish, but I didn't see any of the koi they had in there last year (they must have died). Anyways then my dad gets on this rickety bridge made of boards, and starts to jump on it. He's like, this bridge isn't very sturdy! Someone could fall in! And then I said that if he didn't stop trying to break the bridge, that someone would be me and him. He explained that he was trying to break the bridge, because if we broke the bridge, then noone else would be able to go on it themselves, and fall in. But I think I'd rather have someone else be as silly as us and go on that bridge, and jump on it and break it and fall in themselves. That pond water suddenly looked really icky. So I got off on the other end (they weren't very big ponds, in fact, the were rather samll round ponds, about10 x 10).

Then I heard something. It was the familiar sound of a killdeer bird, when they are trying to ward you away and around from your nest, by feigning a broken wing. This bird had just stood up, and had her feathers ruffled. Killdeer hide their nests cleverly on the ground, like in this picture. so I looked, and right under her was her nest! It had four speckled eggs in it! That was just the first thing I found.

Next There was a goose nest! It has six eggs in it! I am looking forward to watching the goslings, when they hatch, grow up!

Last of all we played frisbee for a while in the soccer field there. My dad threw a frisbee to my little sister Lanaya, and she actually caught it! I was surprised... I think if she tried she'd bee pretty good at frisbee.

Well, this is mandy, signing off!