A couple of weeks ago, we went to Maple Syrup Days at the forest preserve close to our house. We learned how the Native Americans took about two weeks to make syrup since they didn’t have metal pots, just containers made from wood, and would use hot stones to evaporate the water from the maple tree sap. The pioneers had huge metal cauldrons, and it took two days over a hot fire. Now it takes about two hours to make syrup in a modern evaporator. Sap from trees boiled down to a sweet substance is “sirup,” while “syrup” is fruit based.

Am I boring you? I love learning about history, as long as I don’t have to memorize any dates!

Did you know bee drones come from unfertilized eggs? Another fascinating little tidbit I learned at Maple Syrup Days.

Saturday night was Earth Hour. Ed and I lit some candles and turned out our lights. We also felt that turning on the TV or playing with the computer was cheating. They emit a lot of light! The girls were already sleeping, and we looked out our window to see if any of our neighbors were participating. We saw two dark houses, but we couldn’t decide if they were really having Earth Hour, or if they were just gone for the evening! Next year we’ll plan more, I think. I told Ed it would have been fun to light a fire in the fireplace and pop corn the old fashioned way, but we didn’t think about it until too late.

Sorry, I can’t give you any more details about what we did this year.

How about you? Did you participate, or even know about it? Turns out Canada did a fantastic job! There’s some cool pictures of some Chicago landmarks going dark over here.

Want more random? Visit Keely over at The Un-Mom for a lot more!