Axes. Owls, Birthdays...

We had a semi-eventful weekend. Well, maybe not eventful, but we did a few things, both necessary and fun.

Saturday, we did some work on our Viking Shields (James decided to make one, too), and James hung up our Viking Axes in the dining room. They look really good (a little out of place with the Eric Sloane just a few feet away, but we'll figure that out later). We'll hang one of our homemade shields in between the axes.

And since I liked the heft of the axe in my hand, I ordered a couple training axes, and also a throwing axe. Sunday, we went to our nearby hiking spot to test it out, since James didn't like me throwing it at the palm in the backyard. My first throw stuck, though!

The place we hike has a lot of beautiful white sand, almost like dunes. I'll take a pic next time we go. What I really like about it is the wide variety and abundance of animal tracks we see every time we go.

We often see a few panther tracks, lots of snake tracks, lots of rabbit, bird, and deer tracks.

Sometimes, I see a set of tracks I don't recognize, like these:

I'm still not sure what they are--maybe a mouse? 

Saturday night, we took out Joe's small telescope and got a pretty good sighting of the moon and also Jupiter with four moons.

I woke up early on Sunday morning, and took the telescope out for some solo sky watching, and was able to see Saturn. It was very far away, and Joe's telescope isn't super powerful, so I couldn't get a great picture. In the viewfinder, it looked like a white spot surrounded by a white ring. I'm terrible at taking pics through the eyepiece (Joe took the ones of the moon and Saturn), so go ahead and laugh at my attempt. I don't mind.

Next weekend, we'll take out James's high powered telescope and see what we can see. 

We also took Joe to get his last step in the pre-New Zealand documentation process done yesterday--he had his TB skin test read. So when I got home, I scanned and emailed everything to the program director. We have an orientation on May 9th with the director at his condo. Joe is super excited. And I am, too, because this is like a dream come true for him.

And yesterday was Callie's birthday. She was super happy with her gift I sent, and I texted her all day long to make sure she didn't get the tattoo she was jokingly threatening to get. Lol.

And it was nice to see my Aidan's dad's wife post on Aidan's birthday post about Callie...

I thought that was super sweet...

And while I was on FB, I saw that my brother's owl box had some activity over the weekend (there are baby owls in there, too)...

Well, that's all I have time for...gotta move to some inner music and start my day!