past weekend activities...

grand daughter and her horse practicing for cross country

My daughter sent this pic of my grand daughter practicing this past weekend. She and her horse had an 'incident' a few weeks ago where Tootsie (her horse) got herself straddled on one of the jumps at a show. It was the first time this has happened and un-nerved both my grand daughter and the horse. Now they are working at getting over it... and from this pic, it looks like they have.

And it's finally looking like Spring around here... although we've been told that rain is coming Tuesday and Wednesday. But if we can trust the weathermen, it should be a nice weekend for Easter. 

Our neighborhood had an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids this past Sunday. My youngest grand daughter participated. Here is a picture of her after the initial egg hunt waiting for the balloon lady to make her a balloon creature.

first in line for a balloon creation

She is five and getting ready to start Kindergarten this Fall. We are anxious to see how that goes. Academically she should do fine and emotionally I think she could be far beyond that... but physically, she is extremely active and we wonder if she will sit still long enough to handle a class room situation. I guess we shall see.

Oh, and I have to boost a bit about my clean (and almost clutter-free computer room/office). We have been using this room as the 'dump anything we didn't know what to do with' room for a while. It was getting out of hand. Since my daughter and 16 year old grand daughter are coming in this weekend for Easter, I finally got motivated to tackle it. It's not completely un-cluttered, but it's definitely better.

Also our  Home Owner's Association is promoting a neighborhood lawn sale in April and asked everyone to participate. We don't generally do garage sales, but this was another good reason to get rid of stuff that has been accumulating. It's unbelievable how many books and old DVD's we boxed up... not to mention old toys and computer cr....p - excuse my french!). 

Anyway, if I don't get back to the computer in the next few days, I wish you all a very Happy Easter and hopefully some wonderful spring weather!

Then... and now

a few years ago...




















and now...

















As you who read my blog know, our grand daughter just spent a week with us. She is great with the cats and spends a lot of her time either playing with them (Jack misses her already) or taking pictures of them as well as the outside cats, raccoons, possums (we have a tiny one that visits these days), etc. She will sit for hours perfectly still waiting for them to come close. Or she will don rubber boots and head out by the creek looking for turtles and snakes.  Yes, she is a natural born nature-lover.  You can find more pics of her riding at an early age here.  (just scroll down to "Grand daughter and her horses")

But when she's here in Dallas, she misses her horses, dogs, cats, and turtles back home.  Luckily she has an iPhone and can use it to see and talk to them daily... as well as her family and friends (kind of like skyping?)

Loving animals seems to run in the family as even our youngest grand daughter (7 mons) seems to be fascinated with the cats and gets so excited when she sees them.  She wants to grab them... and occasionally does.  Luckily they don't seem to mind.  (We don't let her grab Rose... Rose is a bit unpredictable).  And recently she found the pink horse (which use to be other GD's when she was young) and is crazy about it . We have to laugh as she actually jumps up and down on it like she's 'posting'...

She likes to feel the fur...

Here she is jumping up and down hanging onto the mane...

















and lastly here is a picture of that tiny possum that has become a nightly visitor...

we call him 'Tossum' (for tiny possum - original, yes?)

an affinity for turtles...

daughter's front yard

daughter's front pond

one of grand daughter's baby Red Sliders in pond

We have an affinity for turtles.  I think lots of people do.  But it seems that each generation (if they have the same affinity/attraction) goes a step further.  I loved horses (rode but never owned one), my daughter got to own 2 as a child, and now my grand daughter has 3.  See where I'm going here? Now I always liked turtles and we have several box turtles that make our yard (which goes down to a creek) their home . Growing up, my daughter was forever rescuing turtles and tortoises from the roads and bringing them home to deposit in the creek.  Now my grand daughter owns several; 2 African Sulcatas, 1 Russian, 1 Red Footed, and 3 baby Red Sliders. She studies what kind of environment and diet each needs and provides special habitats for each.   See?... a step further.

Don't ask me why this subject became my post today because I really couldn't tell you. Sometimes I must refer to by mind as my *monkey mind*.... as  it keeps jumping around to unrelated subjects. 

A while back I said that I was going to post some of my old poems, stories, sketches, whatever, daily. Well, obviously (and fortuitously for you) I haven't done that.  They say that life is what happens to us when we're planning something else... well, apparently that's true. I get caught up with 'other things' and forget said plans. But that's OK.  Hopefully we'll have lots of time together. I'll get around to it eventually.

here's one page out of one of my sketchbooks...

make just one someone happy...

my kids back in 1973

Have to put the link to Jimmy Durante's song, "Make just one someone happy..." because when I was commenting yesterday (pertaining to the Alaskan trip), I looked it up on you tube and it made me feel good.  So, I'm going to share. Click here to hear the song.

As you can see from the picture, 2 of my 3 kids have red hair. My oldest (on the right) has 2 boys, a redhead like himself and a brunette, my daughter has a red headed clone of herself, and the baby there is the new father of our latest grandchild, who also looks like she will be red haired (although he himself is a brunette like DH and I).  None of this is of any importance, but I was looking for a photo to post and came across this one.

Daughter, Grand daughter, and Goliath

This is a good picture of Goliath, my daughter's pet Friesian (it's a long story). My husband calls him her expensive 'lawn ornament'.  She also has 2 black Quarterhorses that actually 'earn their keep'...