My Lovely Husband and the girls were sat on the bed by the girls’ bedroom window, watching intently.  There was a raccoon wandering up and down the roof of the next door house at exactly the same level as the  window.

Raccoon on the roof

He was completely oblivious to us as we sat watching him and he’d obviously got himself stuck without an easy way to get down.

After 5 minutes on the roof, he suddenly noticed us watching him and tried to get down from by jumping into a bush which wasn’t strong enough to hold him and he spent a minute or two swaying precariously in the branches, trying to stay in the tree!  The raccoon got himself down then went on to wander around our garden for a few minutes until my Lovely Husband shouted at it.

(In case you wondered, the girls were discussing the equal sharing of the Top Trump-like cards in the How to Train Your Dragon series of books!)

Luckily for me, the girls have decided that they like to do that too.  Here they are relaxing in the garden with their books:

Relaxing in the sun with a good book!

I must find some time to do this myself too.  After all, they can only learn to sit still and read a book in the sunshine for half an hour if I’m there demonstrating how it should be done!

When we finally make it home to England, we’ll have to put some time into practicing reading books by the fire whilst drinking hot chocolate instead.  The pleasures of being a parent…

The venue is a great place to take children as it is outdoors, so not too loud, with a big grassy lawn for running around on but the seating area is covered in case of rain. Despite having seats, we sat and watched the first support act from the grassy bank whilst the girls played and ate hotdogs.

The Lumineers are very popular at the moment so as it got nearer to the main act coming on stage the pavillion started to get busy, so we headed to our seats. We watched the second support act, Sam Doores and the Tumbleweeds, from our seats. The Big One didn’t take to the country music so she took her book out and read instead!

The Big One reading through Sam Doores and the Tumbleweeds!

The book was soon put away when the Lumineers took to the stage. The music is easy to like folk-rock music and the girls know all the words of their favourite songs Ho Hey, Classy Girls and Big Parade. The difference with seeing them live is that you could really see that each band member was a talented musician. The girls are now inspired to learn the cello having watched the female cellist in the band. That would be very cool!

The Lumineers

The girls loved the whole performance and they were still dancing at the end of the gig at 10.30pm as the band played their favourite song, Big Parade.

This year we didn’t get a month of rain and it has been warm at times, but nowhere near as hot as last year. We’ve been in the pool a handful of times, compared to every day (sometimes several times a day!) By May last year we lived in the pool.

I’m not complaining – the coolness is wonderful. But it is confusing.

Yesterday I was in the girls’ school all morning listening to children read. It was a sunny morning so we sat outside and I regretted not wearing shorts as it was very warm (25c according to my car). By 2.30pm we were at the park and we were the only ones there as it was windy and cold (12c). Last night I had to turn the heating on as it got down to 5c outside before I went to bed.

This morning the girls are wearing tights and jumpers with their school uniform, yet the sky is still blue and cloudless. All the people we saw on the way to school were in coats, hats and gloves. I didn’t even buy school jumpers until December!

What is going on with the weather?! Sometimes it really does feel like four seasons in one day…

We all had a fantastic time.  Due to April being considered a little chilly (to be fair, maximum daytime temperatures have been ranging from 12c to 30c in the past 2 weeks), the park was relatively empty.  There was a children’s festival going on, but it was aimed at pre-schoolers which meant the rides for older children were empty.  Even the rides for adults had no queues at all.

The rides were good, but what we were really there for was the sea creatures.  The first show we saw was Cannery Row Caper, a sea lion comedy show which all the kids loved, and the adults did too.  The sea lions were very funny but the sea otter nearly stole the show!

Cannery Row Caper

The Big One was desperate to feed the sea lions, after having had such a lovely time feeding seals when we were in Victoria (see here).  If you knew the Big One before we came to the US you would find this a bit strange.  Those on the school trip to Marwell may remember the shouting and tears when we went through the giraffe house, all due to the smell!  Sea lions are not renowned for being the best smelling animals, and as for the fish…  The girls were not deterred though and they purchased small trays of fish which they were able to throw to the waiting sea lions below.

We then walked past the sea otters, who were fun to watch, but we wanted to get across the park to see the One Ocean Shamu show, featuring the killer whales.

Shamu

The killer whales were so graceful, diving in and out of the water.  They were very agile too, sliding up onto platforms so they could wave to the audience, or, at one point, for the mummy whale and the baby whale had a cuddle.  They also moved to the music and seemed to be happy to do anything for a reward of lots of fish!  We had sat in the splash zone and luckily we watched the audience on the other side being splashed by the whales tails before it was our turn.  My Lovely Husband and the Big One leaped to the bench behind to avoid getting wet.  My legs were a little damp but the front 5 or 6 rows of the audience were completely drenched!

We took a break for some lunch and a wander past the flamingoes and the alligators (not in the same area, fortunately for the flamingoes!)  We saw the penguins and puffins (they are both very funny to watch and we could have spent a long time there) and then it was time to go on the roller coasters and one of the water rides, which was wet but not terribly exciting.  The roller coasters were reportedly good, but I sat out with the children in the sun instead.

The final show was Azul, featuring the dolphins and the beautiful beluga whales.  The interaction between the trainers and the whales was amazing to watch.  The girls sat with their eyes very wide the whole time, but particularly the first time one of the trainers appeared out of the water, seemingly from nowhere, being pushed along at high speed by a beluga!

Azul show – beluga whales

There were acrobats, high dives, a clown, synchronised swimming and dancing…

Dancing with a beluga whale

It was truly breathtaking and it was so difficult to watch everything that was going on it would definitely be worth going back to see the show again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  The girls loved it and wanted to know how the whales were trained.  They also wanted to know how they could become beluga trainers, high divers, synchronised swimmers…  The world is truly an exciting place when there are so many possibilities of what you can be when you grow up.  (If only I could decide what I want to be!)

Our last stop was Dolphin Cove to watch the dolphins eating and playing.  The queue was too big to allow us to feed them but the girls spent 15 very happy minutes watching the dolphins and trying to get close enough to touch them.

It was time to head back to the hotel for a swim and some dinner, but Sea World was great.  The girls love anything to do with sea creatures (thank you Octonauts!) so for them it was an amazing day.  They now have one wish – to swim with whales and dolphins.  I guess we’ll be adding that to our very long adventures bucket list!

My Mum brought the bird feeder to help us attract the Northern Cardinals into the garden (which worked a treat) and it’s like a swing chair that all the birds like coming to. The dove obviously liked it so much that it decided to make it’s nest there yesterday:

Daft dove

It looks very comfy, swinging away in the seat. It must have some eggs in the nest already as it’s not budging, even when the girls got very close for a look. The Little One is most upset that the pretty dangly beads that she put on the bird feeder to attract the birds has worked so well that the dove has built it into its nest!

When they hatch, these chicks should be much easier to see than the last lot. We’ll be able to see them through the wire mesh in the bottom of the swing! I just hope we don’t have any more stormy weather as the chicks will either suffer from motion sickness or fall out during very windy weather. That I don’t want to explain to the girls…

In Houston, there are teeny tiny ants that get everywhere, including indoors. When we first got here it took ages to get rid of them from the kitchen – not hundreds of them, just enough on a marble counter to make your eyes go a bit funny!

There were a few hanging out in the bathroom too but I could never work out where they were coming from, so other than squirting them with nasty stuff when they went marching around in high numbers, we’ve mainly ignored them. They are tiny, after all, and I can’t see that they do any damage.

Tiny ant by my little finger

I was crouched down next to the shower this week watching some more ants wandering around when suddenly one disappeared. It just vanished and I couldn’t work out where it had gone. I paid a bit more attention for a few minutes and sure enough, I saw another ant disappear. This time I saw where he went:

Ant hole

Now this hole is in a tiled seat in the shower. It’s not a very big hole but I’m wondering whether inside the seat there is a massive ant colony! I’ve no idea what they’re living on (shampoo and toothpaste maybe?) but it’s really tempting to break into the seat to find out how many are in there…

I went out and the big bird flew away.  My first thought was to check the nest.  When I looked there were no chicks there and we all felt so sad.  I then saw a little grey, fluffy bundle hopping around behind the pool.  Mummy and Daddy Northern Cardinal were flying around it cheeping madly!  At least one was ok but what should we do?

The girls and I kept a watch on the chick to stop any other predators heading in to the garden.  It was lucky we did as a raccoon which had visited the garden earlier on in the week soon returned for another visit.  I only got a picture of his leg and tail as he left the garden!

A raccoon’s leg!

After the raccoon left and the parent birds quietened down, we heard more little cheeps and it was then that we found the two other chicks.  Hurrah – all 3 chicks were safe.  Unfortunately none of them could fly anywhere.

The parents were flying between the chicks trying to encourage them to fly but for a long time, they just stayed where they were:

Eventually one chick made it up to the top of the garden wall and hid in the hedging there.  The other two chicks kept trying to fly but weren’t making any progress.

I popped back inside and then heard the parent birds start squawking again.  This time there was a cat climbing up the fence.  We’ve been here 15 months and it was the first cat we’d seen in the garden.  People aren’t supposed to have free-range cats in the community (every so often an email is sent round from the management company reminding everyone that cats should be kept inside!)  We scared the cat away and then the girls took on guard duties.

The stronger chick made it up through the hedge to the top of the wall, leaving only the little chick still on the ground.  The Daddy bird was never far from it:

There were constant squawks of encouragement and after another hour the little bird was in the relative safety of the hedge.  From there we lost sight of it so I’m hoping it made it up to the top of the wall to join the rest of its family.  It was a couple of days early for them to be leaving the nest but they seemed to be doing ok.

Baby birds day 1

Baby birds day 2

Baby birds day 3

Baby birds day 3

Baby birds day 4

Baby birds day 5

For what happened next, click here.

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• The baby birds have hatched! (longamericanholiday.wordpress.com)

On Saturday, the Big One went to the local roller rink for a birthday party.  We’ve driven past it many times and thought about going in but hadn’t quite got round to it.  Walking in was very much like walking into a sports centre from the 80s: the decor, the smell the slightly sticky floors…  The thing that really hadn’t changed at all was the music.  The DJ played a lot of music from the late 1980s and early 1990s!

The girls both loved skating, despite it being very difficult and there being nearly as much time spent falling down as skating round.  The Big One managed to get the hang of it by the end of 2 hours but the Little One still needed a firm hand (or two…) to keep her upright.

It was an excellent arm work out for me – I ached for 2 days afterwards.   I’d forgotten how heavy roller boots are, particularly when you have to pick up a child who is wearing them, over and over again!  Both girls have bruises all over their legs from falling over and my toes have still not recovered.  I’ve no idea why I thought sandals would be the ideal footwear for the afternoon…

We have promised the girls we will go back again but next time I might borrow my Lovely Husband’s steel toe cap work boots!

Obviously this is not the girls skating – the pictures I have are very dark and blurry, so instead here is an Englishman on his roller skates from 1905 instead.  Enjoy!