April 2, 2012

Birding at Disney Wilderness Preserve

by Sus in Family News, Sus Tags: birding, birds, conservation, Disney, ecotourism, endangered species, Florida, I-4, Orlando, recommended, things to do, woodpecker

Last week, I took a morning off and went birdwatching  with my neighbor, Sheila.  We decided to visit the Disney Wilderness Preserve.  According to their website:

“Heavily logged and used as ranchland for decades, the preserve is restored very near to its original state. (Records remain from the area’s first Spanish missionaries.) Large-scale wetland and upland restoration has included the removal of non-native, invasive plants and grasses and the removal of agricultural ditches.”

It was fascinating to think the area looked just as the early Spanish explorers would’ve found it.

The Preserve is also working with The Nature Conservancy to re-establish the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker in the preserve. I’ll definitely come back some time and look for them.  (This woodpecker can only be found in the United States.)

We discovered a baby gopher tortoise on our path.   I’ve seen adult gopher tortoises before (at about 15″ across); this baby was about 2″ across!  I used this great online key for identifying turtles to figure out what this little fellow was.

If you’d like to know, we spotted: gopher tortoise, stork, sandhill crane, little blue heron, greater yellowlegs, osprey, red-bellied woodpecker, pine warbler, turkey, eastern meadowlark, loggerhead shrike, catbird, tufted titmouse, and hundreds of tree swallows.  We also saw a number of butterflies, but didn’t identify them.

Enjoy some pictures of  the birds, the tortoise, and the preserve itself.

March 22, 2012

A Baby Shower Trip

by Sus in Ben, Bonnie, Family News, Family Photos, Jenn, Josh, Sus Tags: cathedral, family, I-95, interstate, museums, National Park, pictures, recommended, restaurants, road trips, things to do, Washington DC

Josh, Jenn, and I visited Ben and Bonnie in DC for Little Schmitt’s baby shower. We decided not to stop overnight, so on March 1^st and on March 6^th we drove the whole way from 7 am to 10 pm.  (It wasn’t that bad.  I’d do it again.)

The baby shower was fun with many of Bonnie’s friends attending and her mom and sister, too.  The food and decorations followed a Peter Rabbit theme.  You can see some pictures in my Facebook photo album from our trip.

We took three short trips while we were in town.  We  visited the National Cathedral one afternoon; this photo was taken in the foyer before our planned stop at Nielsen’s Frozen Custard in Vienna,Virginia (even with cold temperatures and a light snow flurry).

Jenn wanted to visit the National Museum of the American Indian, especially to see an exhibit on horses and Indian culture.  We then crossed the mall to the National Gallery of Art and were really impressed! We saw original works by VanGogh, DaVinci, Rembrandt, Gaugin, Picasso, and more.

On our third trip, we went back for more of the National Gallery of Art and also visited the Renwick Gallery, too, which had an exhibit of  decorative arts from the White House.

Mike needed to stay in Orlando because of the one-month-long system test and missed joining us for this family trip. You can see all the fun photos of the baby shower and our sightseeing activity as if you were able to come, too.

For more restaurant ideas, check out my list of Places to Eat in the D. C. Area.

March 14, 2012

Jenn’s Adventure Begins and You Can Follow Along

by Sus in Family News, Jenn Tags: family, family life, Germany, international, pictures, Stetson, students, Switzerland, travel, university

We’ve enjoyed having Jenn with us since early December.   I especially enjoyed it when all three of us would ride to work together.  (She was employed full-time in the Specialized Donations office.)  We took this picture on a beautiful, windy day in the quad at Campus Crusade for Christ World Headquarters.

So, why wasn’t she at school?  She will be in April… in Germany!  The semesters are different there, so she’ll be taking classes (in German) from early April through July.  I’m sure she’ll appreciate your prayers for her to be safe and healthy and to do well in her studies.  She’ll return just two weeks before she begins her senior year at Stetson University.

She actually boarded a plane last night and should be landing at the Basel airport within the hour. She’ll email us sometime later today that she arrived safely.

I’ll write about her time in Germany once in a while, but you can follow her new blog directly.  She’ll be sharing photos and stories regularly at the brightest and the darkest.  Jenn’s already written some great posts about getting ready to go, including our trip to D.C. for Ben and Bonnie’s baby shower. (Here’s my photos from the trip.)  In the upper right corner of Jenn’s blog, you can subscribe with your email address to receive a notice when she writes something new.  As it happened, her camera broke just a few days ago, so we helped her pick out a new one.  She’s all set to take some great travel photos and give you a peek into studying abroad.  She’d love to have you join her travels.

Jenn actually left early to intern at The Art Factory in Kandern, Germany.  We’ll write more about this ministry in the next few weeks.  Jenn will be studying at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Freiburg, Germany, which is in the Black Forest region.