Vacation activity bags and catnip

We've been working on treat bags to celebrate every time we cross a state line on our upcoming gigantic road trip.  I checked out books from the library about each state we'll be in, and the kids  decorated state-themed bags. Then I stuffed the bags with a junky little treat and a piece of trivia about the state.  We didn't read all those books, mind you. We just skimmed them for decorating inspiration and interesting facts.  A little geography was learned too.

I'm also making stuck-at-home activity bags for the cats.  Ok, go ahead and snort and mock.  I'm not ashamed of my weirdness or my love for my cats.  I'm bringing home some new Aldi boxes for them to explore and some paper bags with little interesting things for them, including homemade catnip-stuffed toys.  I sent Sarah outside to harvest some catnip.  She came back with about 6 leaves and said that was all she could do, because there were "big, scary bees out there. And not just regular bumblebees, Mom!"  So I went out to investigate this new species of bee...

 

...and I found several of these beautiful dragonflies enjoying the flowers of the catnip.  One science lesson later, we identified them as Plathemis lydia.  So we named them all Lydia.

I also found Marty in the catnip patch, drunk as a sailor.

After some trial and error, we found that the best team for making toys is to have Noah sew them and Sarah stuff them with catnip.

Shadow was VERY interested in the catnip.  We had to keep slipping it to him to keep him away from the business at hand.

Some of the aforementioned trial and error.

I just noticed that bottle of unidentified booze down there.  I sure could have used that earlier!

Sarah's concentration face.  :)

the completed toys!

After making a couple for each cat, the kids wanted to keep mass producing them, so they made several more and are planning on selling them to make a little vacation spending money.