Sunday, March 27, 2016

Happy Easter and the Lamb Cake!



The Easter cake above is one my Mom used to bake on Easter.  Now my daughter, Kristy bakes one for her family on Easter.  This year my granddaughter, Lauren, baked it and iced half the lamb's wool, and arranged the flowers below it and the Easter eggs on the table.   Isn't it a darling cake?  Yummy, too.  A wonderful Easter tradition that is being carried on. 

Below is Lauren.  She has long blond hair and won't let Kristy do anything with it, unless it's pulling it back for gymnastics.  The other night Lauren and her friend Emma had a "Girls night in...nails, hair and scary stories to finish off the night." with their moms. If I had a mom who could "do" my hair this beautifully, I'd be as happy as a clam!  In fact, Kristy taught me how to French Braid my hair.  Isn't Lauren beautiful? 


Here is Kristy's hair-do, I bet Lauren was the "hair-doer."  Very intricately done, Lauren, good job!


 Love the nail color, girls!  (Notice the hulu skirt - they both had them on.  Very fancy.)


And the spooky ending to the evening.


I love this idea, a nice way to spend the evening with the kids and friends, fun and easy.  Making memories, for sure!

From me and Katie, whether you are a believer or not, have a wonderful Easter Sunday, everyone!

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Some critter photos...

Katie and I are still hanging around the Cottonwood/Sedona area with Jeanne and her dog Riley.  

The weather has been so good here.  Warm days, cool nights and mornings.   We're definitely enjoying this area.

 Jeanne kept seeing this Roadrunner and would text me, but I wasn't facing in the right direction to see him coming.  Finally the other day he appeared right outside my dinette window and I was able to get a bunch of photos of him.  He was pecking around on the ground when I snapped the first shot, and he must have heard it.  He looked up at my window, craned his neck, looked right at me, and then walked on to the other side of The Palms and headed away from us.  I love the first three shots:









Here's Katie hiding her chew toy.  She always hides them very carefully after checking out a few spots, walks away, comes back and checks to see if they are still there, then picks them back up and jumps over to her blanket to chew them up.  I love watching her trying to find a hiding place.  She never leaves them hidden, so it must be something in her DNA telling her to hide them. 

This is the spot she chose this time, under one of her blankets.



Then she pushes the blanket with her nose for a while to cover the chew toy.


The funny thing is, she NEVER gets the toy covered.  I can still always see it.  Poor Katie...


Now she's picked it up again.


Back to the corner of the couch where she eats all her treats and chew toys.


Katie gets one chew toy a day.  We have a couple of different kinds, and she always finishes them.  I wish she would make them last a few days.  Her BIG treat of the day.  Mostly her treats are good for her, her joint meds, which she thinks are treats, frozen green beans and baby carrots.  She loves those, too.


Not a whole lot going on - I seldom take out my camera any more, but I have a few things to post in the coming days.  I'm starting to bring the camera on walks again.

Oh, yeah, and I've caught six mice.  Some in The Palms, some in the engine.   I've pretty much spread snap and glue traps across the inside of the engine and in front of and under my driver's seat.  They get in through the engine into the driver's foot well, but I can't find the hole they are using.  I got some fine steel wool and stuffed it into areas that looked like they might be openings, but the steel wool caught fire and I threw it outside quickly.  Luckily nothing ignited except for the steel wool.   I don't see any exposed wires up there, so I don't know what caused it to ignite.  Spontaneous combustion?   Scared the heck out of me, though, and I won't be doing that again. 

One mouse did get into the cabin and left a bunch of calling cards, so the next night I had a runway of traps set out after Katie was in bed.  Along the couch, along the rug/couch floor area, on the dinette seats, etc.  He made quite a racket that night running all over the place, but I didn't catch him in the cabin.  In the morning he was dead in a trap under the driver's seat, and I haven't heard anything since.  I think I've gotten them, and we just moved again, so hopefully I've left them all behind.  We'll see...  Nothing gets your heart started like waking up to the patter of little feet in the middle of the night.  One of the blessings of sleeping over the cab. 

It's SUPER THIRD WEDNESDAY again - my favorite day of the month.  $$$  From me and Katie, have a great day, everyone!   :)