He's back, birds, and Romeo Flies Free...

Well, Jon is back from Scout camp. It appears they had a very good time. I don't have his photos yet, but here are ones that I took from before and after!

Many of the kids were worn out and I was impressed that Jon seemed to look just the same..a bit dirtier and without his scarf, but pretty much the same!

This last week, I took lots of bird photos. Some of them were fuzzy, but some were not.

The finches are beautiful (especially the males)! The Ring Necked Dove (Romeo, who is mum's ring necked dove) was hiding in the trees and this smaller dove was outside looking for seeds while we were having an outside dinner. Earlier, while I was bird watching (not during dinner), Maxwell was sitting on the table looking regal.

And with that, I will close for today. Reading some 'new' Mercedes Lackey books.

an assortment!

Well, we have babies all over the place. Baby birds that is. However, they do not photograph very well as I am so far away and they move so very fast. I will not post the birds, but we have baby robins and flycatchers. (those latter ones are really small and fast!) I am hoping to take more pix later.

I also have seen some very cool sunflowers around here. One of the mutants did not turn out well..it was very dusky and my camera batteries were dying..I will take more of that later, also. It was a sunflower that had two heads back to back. Very odd. This flower is one in my yard..I have decided to not plant seeds next year. At least ones from packets. I have much better luck with bird seed. Not sure why they heads are so tiny, but they are rather cute! There is a bunch of mint behind the flowers and under the feeder.

We also got to go and see an outdoor production of Grease. It was lots of fun, HOT, but fun. It is very hard to put a cooling system in an outdoor theatre! We could not take photos of anything inside..which was sad, because it was such a neat stage. However, they did have a few cars outside that could be photographed. The white one is a Galaxy 500 convertible, the blue one is a Ford Fairlane, and the yellow one is Ford with a chevy engine in it. Steve rather liked the white one. He was not impressed with the flashy yellow one at all.

I have not been able to get a photograph of the skunk hanging about up at Grandma's, but I will keep trying. I did find some very cool moths in the house. Usually a moth is a bad thing, but the two I found were very amazing. Here is one of them.

Is it not very cool? The other one was distressed and not as easy to shoot..of course, I would be stressed, too, if Moses was trying to catch me! I managed to let it out of the house. The brown one was too high on the wall for me to get, I do not know where it went.

Reading Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's books on the Obsidian Triology. (Again.) It is very hot here. Most of these books take place in winter, which is nice to read when it is hot.

tree limbs and more birthdays!

We had some friends over, I did not know it was the day after Donna's Bday, but we had dinner and ice cream. And. while she and Ashleigh did the dishes (wonderful fronds!!!), Steve and Leon and Jon removed a tree limb or two! In spite of the gashes..it did end well and the tree looks great! Jon really was there..he was just keeping out of the danger zone!

When the branch fell (see second photo) Steve was dubbed by the fall.

This week, Steve had a birthday. I made a cake and took it to the shop, but the cake was warm and the m&m's stating his age slid off..so, it read 4-something. It was pretty tasty anyway! We had a thunderstorm on Sunday night and on Monday it was really windy. So windy, we lost another tree limb! Jon moved that without cutting it up. At dinner (and after dinner) we had more visitors and this birthday for Steve cake had brighter numbers. We used up a bunch of stray candles and made a 45..we did have 54 candles, but as they were assorted sizes, we decided to just make the shapes of the numbers. It was fun!

This blogging thing is being a bear. The photos are harder to put on, so this will be all for a bit. Am reading Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Gotta love Cimorene and Kazul!

the end of leave

Well, he is gone again. We miss him and miss him and miss him. However, we know that where he is he is doing something worthwhile. On the 4th we took some family kind of photos and then went to Hood River and watched their firework show. Before the show we had Domino's pizza in our hotel room and watched Arnold..How much more American can you get? (OK, I suppose watching Stallone would have been more American.) I also learned that I need a tripod for Christmas. (One like TJ has that is a walking stick and tripod mix would be fun.) On Sunday we took Tony to the airport and watched him leave. I did notice later that he had pretty much the exact same stuff on when he left as he did when he arrived. And he really wasn't traveling that light! Later we had lunch with Kanga and Pauli.

The boys and Grandpa and then all of them and Grandma.

Here are the boys waiting for fireworks and then a sign I found on the wall at an Embarq building. I took a picture because Kanga does so often and she is right, sometimes they are very amusing! I understood the wheeled things, but CAMPING? Maybe loitering would have been a better chioce. Jon wondered where he would put the tent and campfire!

After that, he left..sigh. And as I said, we miss him.

Well, I am having trouble with this blog thing today. I am going to stop now and try to finish my curtains, which are not working well either. The bobbin keeps boggling up! I will post more this weekend, maybe it will work better! TTYL!

Busy, busy, busy!

OK, Wednesday we got Tony at the airport.

We went to Tillamook and saw the June Dairy parade and went to the beach and picked up Tony's bike at his friend's house:




See the purty cows???


We stopped in Arlington on our way home. The mama duck is the one from 'below', however this is not the best pic that I took. I will have to scroll through them to find it. The goslings and geese were also at the park.




We have played several games of triominos with Granpa and Grandma:

The boys went camping:



I, however, got to go blueberry picking! For almost $10 I got a little more than 24 cups. It was tons of fun! Here is the link to the place my friend and I picked www.lampsonblueberries.com


Then, it was Thursday and we celebrated Tony's 20th as well as shucked some peas. Phew, the time flies when you are having fun!!!





Well, that is our week and a bit more in a nutshell! I have two new books to read, so MUST finish the Long Patrol. Oh, while in Tillamook, I did get started up on Facebook (compliments of M. Beyer!!!). I'm always ready to do new things, even if they seem nervousing (I made that word up)!

One year ago last weekend.

Well, it was just about a year ago some very good friends of ours came to visit and helped us revamp our kitchen/dining room and bathroom. It was Hodaka Days here in Athena and Mark and Karen helped us do renovations!

The start of the Hopkins Hole in the Wall.

Mark, Steve, and a smaller Jon looking to see if it is a load bearing wall. Karen is seen here unloading it. As usual, she was taking care of business!

And here is the first part of the Hopkins Hole in the Wall.

Today, it looks like this (OK, it is pretty untidy and the color is off, but the idea is there!):
The view opens up into all three rooms and the colors complement each other, too. Mark's Custom Painting (Mark) helped with that later in the year, too.

The bathroom was pretty scary, but it got much better!

It was a mess and Mark and Steve were wonderful!

Today, it is more like this:

Still pretty smallish, but it has a much taller ceiling and more space all around.

Thank you Mark and we will miss you forever, Karen. And Karen, we'll see you on the other side.

The welcome mat is out!

Hooray, it is DONE!!!!! The Little House is done and, if I must say so myself, it is sweet! Come on and stay for a bit and play. Granted, there is no bathroom, but that is a minor technicality!
The futon, bedding in the drawer next to it. We have also added two pillows for comfort! The boarding in back will eventually host a dart board. We need a cork batting for it before we put it up. You can barely see the floor here, but it has carpet on most of it and then a great kind of laminate tile on the rest. A loverly thing!
Since this photo (taken Sunday evening!!!) a Nintendo has been added and the top shelf has an array of Mtn Dew collectibles on it.

This area has changed the most since Sunday. The window now has a curtain (I didn't get enough rods before) and we have added lego bricks to the Bionicles and K'nex. I am not sure what else is on the shelves, but they are full of toys! Here we see the wonderful bookshelves. I still need to add some more books. (I am thinking the ones by Brian Jacques would be nice out here. This room kind of reminds me of the gate house at the Abbey!) As you can see the pull out desk is waiting for a writer and the linen drawer is just underneath it! The curtain on the door is fabric from the Arabian Nights play THS did ages past and the rest of the curtains are aged sheets that had a bit of life left in them.

I wanted curtains that would hold up well and wash well. Thus, I used sheets. I like using sheets to make curtains, they are much more durable! In fact, the ones I made and hung in Tony's room are from Oz. The Wicked Witch's magic powers burnt tiny holes in the sheet and I couldn't see tossing away such a wonderful bit of history, so I made curtains from the wholer cloth!

Speaking of THS theatre, this photo is a bit hard to see (the angle I had to shoot it from was awkward, I was on the stairs). It is in our basement entryway. There are 4 plays present here. Hot, Oz, Beauty, and Nights. Pretty fun, huh???

Still reading Jacques. The Badger books!