Very cute!

I got this photo off the front of the Sierra Club Magazine. It is hard to make out at first, but it is a hermit crab with 3 sea anemone on it. One big one on the top, one medium size on the left and a teeny tiny one on the right. With the title next to it, "who you callin' cupcake?". This is what I think of as extremely cute!!!

K~

My Working assistant

Puff likes to work with me in at my desk. He keeps me company and is my personal spell checker. Thus, the misspellings are explained. ( I really wish that was the reason :-)) Any way. He is so sweet and usually just sits under some cloth or something. Then, he gets a bee in his bonnet and needs to move around. He likes to lick thinks and slip and slide around. Then I know it's time for him to return to his warm sunning post in his habitat. K~

Checking my work.

Look at that face!


It's time to go back now!

(What's that on his knee???)

Thanks Lisa!

My friend Lisa gave me a gift certificate to a great little yarn shop here in St. Paul. I had a really good time shopping for some yummy, yummy yarn!! Of course, like I explained to her, it cost me "a bit more" to get all I wanted. DANGEROUS!!

Thanks Lisa!!

K~

My most recent book mark

This is the book mark that I made for Bobbi for her birthday. I designed it to look like a stain glass window. I think the colors remind me of Bobbi!. K~

Happy Birthday BOBBI !

The Sun as seen by a 4 year old.

Happy Birthday Bobbi! I hope the sun is shining where you are.

It is here today!! Finally. Have a good one! K~

Good Morning!!

It's hard to be grumpy in the morning with greetings like this! I love my zoo! I get a bit overwhelmed, but feel very wanted and "loved". K~

Bing - Me? Oh I am always sweet, never pull off my peeps pants as they run in fear, never pee on the living room floor and never bark non stop at nothing And NEVER raid mom's garbage can for paper products, earning the "goat boy" .

I'm a keeper!!

Puff - I think this is his "old man" look. He is now 8 and

kinda always looks a bit ticked off

Snakey - very hard to photograph, but always "starving"

Cleo and Clyde's head - feed us any time!!!!

Peanut - yes!!!, breakfast, lunch AND supper and snacks.......

Maxwell "holding" LuLu's hand....honestly, somethings never change!!

"center of a cut beet"

The Photos are not to good.

But, this is my rendition of a center of a cut beet with leaves.

I had a good time doing this one.

K~

Roll over

Bing has learned to roll over. He thinks he is soooo cool! He loves doing this, and waits til I photograph him.

Ham.

K~

Miss Green Belt!!

C did so well on her testing last week. She got her Green belt last night!! I was just beaming. She has worked so hard. She even broke a board with her foot!!! Impressive. I am so proud of her taking this on. She says she wants to do the fall class!!

YEAH C!

A very proud mommy...K~

Bless this Mess??????

This morning I awoke to an irreversible mess of our entire property, inside and out!.

I needed to look at something beautiful and simple. I decided to look back at some photos I had taken in the last week of my garden. This is a new type of begonia.

I have never seen this type of flower before.

Moments after I photographed this, the plant fell on the ground and snapped at the base...........hmmm.

K~

35W

I took this picture while stopped on 94 going East. This is the exit off of 94 going to 35W and then eventually over the bridge.

Too unsettling. I had a meeting over in Minneapolis last Monday. I found myself holding my breath as I drove over any bridge. I had the music loud and the windows open. I know people that took that route home every day at that time. We actually know (far removed) one of the people who lost their life on the bridge that day. We got the call Thursday Morning. It was just so odd to see his face on the news. Rick has played man sports with him on several occasions. I have not been back since. I have traveled over many bridges since. I have been stuck in icky traffic due to re routing. Thanks to all of you who emailed and called.
Being so close is kind of unsettling. K~

The Birds.......

This is a continuing saga of a woman and her inability to get along with birds.

If you recall my post this spring where I so strongly stated that I hated Robins, well, one particular one. Well as I was visiting Chicago on a bright summer day. My bonding with birds didn't get much stronger. My sister and I were walking, looking at globes. We were talking about movies we enjoy, as conversations go, we digressed to other specific topics, then, I commented about not liking Alfred Hitchcock film "the birds". I thought I was able speak open and freely. About an hour later, it happened. Out of no where, a red winged black bird (one of my favorite birds by the way) came directly at my head and attacked my beautiful signature bun on my head!! Yelling the whole time! What the.................. Marsha did remind me of my commenting on not liking the movie.

Here he is!

This whole incident made me a bit leery to sit so close to this fella. I did put sunglasses on, just in case he went for the eyes.

K~

Nature, it's all over me, get it off me!!

"While all those soft city folks are in their beds reading books, we're out here pitting ourselves against the forces of nature"......SB

(during quote, Squidward (aka mommy) is pictured doing just that)

Let me explain..........

"We", Rick, decide we needed to go tent camping this year. All, so we can take the truck on forest roads!

It was 300 degrees outside with a humidity of the Congo jungle!! I was dripping wet the second the air conditioning went off on the truck! My toe slides out of the open door and instantly I am bitten by biting flies! C is running around screaming, due to biting. The ground is wet AND sandy. Bing thinks he's a campin' dog!! We set up the tent, I make the beds and we retreat into the oven to get away from the flies. There we sat D, C and Me! Rick and S went fishing. Later, the dog joins us with 4 paws full of sand. The entire tent is full of damp sand. Rick proceeds to do a famous stuffed animal puppet show. C can't stand it, it's so funny, and proceeds to pee through 3 layers of bedding. Emotions run high. We make it through the night.

The next day, we are going to go to town via forest roads. 10 minutes turn into 1 hour and a half. Then we make it into "town" of 400. There is a public beach. The kids have a super fun time. They are being so good!! D comes up after about 2 hours and says his ear hurts. Moments later he is crying and moaning. In the care to the clinic, he is screaming. We are at the clinic for a total of an hour and at Wal-mart for another 45 minutes with 2 very helpful and SLOWWWWWWW.... pharmacist and helper.

Everyone wants to go home. (Mom not so secretly Ecstatic) It is now about 7 PM on the 2ND day. But after taking the forest roads back, the meds have kicked in and the kids want to stay. I am very, very grumpy, to put it mildly. I re assemble the bedding, minus the pee layers, and then spend the remainder of the evening in the AC of the truck. The kids and Rick went fishing. Later, Rick fanned be through the tent window while he sat outside, claiming there were no mosquito's. After the marshmallow drippings of s'mores in the tent, we all settled down for a night of rest.

Rick made a wonderful breakfast. Blueberry pancakes!! and we were tearing down the tent around the sleeping children. Off we went, via forest roads, to the big city!!

I am proud of being a soft city folk!

To quote Melman from Madagascar...

"AHHHH, Nature it's all over me, get it off me!"

K~

sporting boys!!

D's team was the Spiders. He did so well. It was his first year with baseball. Some of those kids could hit that ball! It was quite impressive.

S's team was France. It was his first year for soccer. He scored many goals! He was pretty good at it. Most of them just sit and roll on the ground. It is quite a cute sight to see!

C's in Karate again. She will be testing for her green belt this week. I will be getting some photos of that then.

K~

sniffs

I went out yesterday morning on a very long and beautiful walk with my puppy Bing. For a while now, we have not been calling them walks. We call the "sniffs". They are not good for exercise or getting a heart healthy work out. Bing stops every inch to sniff the tree, grass, street, side walk, fence, step, hill and so on. After I got home, doing a mile in 45 minutes!!!!, my arms were more tired then my legs, from pulling and dragging my 18 pound pup through the neighborhood.

I am getting a wagon!!!!

K~

globes

There were so many really cool globes on display in Chicago. There purpose is to bring awareness for energy conservation and to be nice to our earth. Marsha and I took a day to check most of them out! These 3 spoke to me.

This one is a globe painted in traditional colors. They knit a huge round sweater around it. The comment was to lower your thermostats and wear a sweater. neat.

This one was just beautiful. The paint for the water was chalk paint.

Then someone wrote on the globe.

Very nice.

This is one of my most favorite art images. I thought it just perfect for the state of our planet.

K~