Weekend handicrafts and the moon!

We had a very fun weekend!
On Friday afternoon, we went out to play with a bunch of our friends who came and went, and we hit our 1000 hours outside goal.  1000.75 hours spent outside from November 3 2014 to September 25 2015. Under 11 months.  I am so proud of Fina (and of myself too!).

On Saturday, we went with some friends to a nearby beach (at a man-made reservoir) and we found 8 baby turtles, swimming near the shore. They were so cute, with their little tails.

No, Fina did not pick one up. The pic shows her friend T holding one. However, she did touch its shell (so did I). It was hard, just like you would imagine a turtle's shell to be.

Here she is with her friends, playing at the beach.

She also made a pinch bowl (with some help from our friend's mom, L) out of clay she gathered on the beach.

Surprisingly for MB, the weather was quite nice (though very windy) with temperatures in the high 20s and they were able to swim for a bit (though the water was cold, though not as cold as I remember Lake Ontario feeling like when I was young - your feet felt like ice cubes). For the end of September, that is pretty good!

Today (Sunday), on our way into the city and back for church, Fina worked on this handicraft.

She is making a scarf for her friend M's birthday this week, on a knitting loom. Knitting on a loom, either a straight board like this, or on a circular loom (they look like this) is really fun and easy for kids to do (compared to knitting with needles). Fina has made many a hat on her circular looms, mainly for her stuffed animal lambs. Knitting looms are also good for people with arthritis, etc.

Here is her nearly completed scarf. (It has been a joint effort between Fina and mom).  M's birthday party is on Tuesday, so we will finish it tomorrow.

In the evening, around 8pm local time, we went to the park to see the Blood Moon / Super Moon / Lunar Eclipse. Some friends met us there through the night. The kids all had so much fun running around our park in the dark. It was such a clear night that we saw so many stars, a satellite moving through the sky and quite a few falling stars as well as the eclipse. We were out for almost 2 hours.

We wanted to sketch the view, so Fina started sketching the moon before her friends arrived.

Then, this is a quick sketch she did while it was "eclipsing."

She was really too busy having fun with her friends to do more sketching than that, but I thought it was still cute!