Our home-made bird feeders

Our first daytime "outing" was attempted when Lia was just seven days old. It was to Target. And it was for birdseed.

Jackson's and Jessica's usual morning routine includes waking up slowly while sitting on the couch sipping their juice, watching cartoons ('Super Why' and 'Dinosaur Train') on PBS. On this particular day, however, the kids decided to watch 'Special Agent OSO' on the Disney channel.

In the episode, OSO was helping some kid make a bird feeder; they used pine cones, peanut butter, bird seed, and string. Jackson was very intrigued by this and asked if we could make a bird feeder like OSO does.

Even though it was just a week since Lia was born, I actually jumped at the opportunity to get the kids (and myself) out of the house. With the weather being so cold and rainy, it had been difficult to get the kids out of the house at all, so we were in need of something to do.

I packed up all three kids and off to Target we went...

On the way, I contemplated how I was going to safely get all three kids into the store, and how I was going to keep all three kids safely in the cart while I shopped.
In my head, I found myself thinking of ways to minimize our time spent in the store. I made mental categories of things we "needed" to buy and things we could live another day without. Not to mention, I also had to think of what would actually fit into a cart filled with three kids...

...we left with toilet paper, graham crackers, and birdseed.

Back at the house, we began our bird feeder project immediately. First, we picked up some pine cones from underneath the pine tree in our side yard. Then, we covered the pine cones with peanut butter and rolled them in the bird seed. Our finished bird feeders were hung out on our deck using some string.




For days, the kids were able to enjoy the view from our deck window as they watched squirrels and birds enjoy a snack from our home-made bird feeders.