Plants and Critters

This is a picture of the beautiful hanging plant that I got for Mother's Day.
This is the back side of it and ...
this is the nest I found in it last Friday. It was empty, so I took it out, thinking I didn't want to mess with a bird nest in my planter. It was next to the dark colored plant.

Today, when I went to water it, I found that the birds had made another nest and now there are 3 eggs in it. I'm going to try to not disturb it now that there are eggs there, but I will still need to keep it watered, I don't want the plants to die either. I guess when you find a good home, you stick to it, even if your nest is stolen.

When I watered the planter on the ground below it, I discovered another critter making its home in it. I wonder if it could be from some of the eggs that were in the pond earlier. It doesn't seem like it could have gotten this big if it hatched this year. I had been watching the ones I had given Kari, whenever I was at their house. I was anxious to see how they looked when I was there yesterday, but one of the first things Saben told me was that they had hopped away. The last time I saw them they were pretty small and still had long tails, but they had grown back legs. Since it had been 2 weeks since I was there, I guess that was all the time they needed to finish developing and go looking for a new home. Maybe Kari should check her planters!

Pop-its and Crocs

When I went to Kari's house today, I took a few gifts for the kids. One of the things I took to Annika was this little pair of crocs. She loved them and wore them all day.

Knowing how much Saben enjoys the 4th of July, I took him a box of pop-its. He knew what they were and wanted to go out and start throwing them on the ground to make some noise as soon as I gave them to him. Once in awhile he was able to throw them hard enough for them to pop, but most of the time he didn't throw them hard enough. Kari reminded him that they would make the noise if he stomped on them, so the rest of the time, they stomped on them. Annika had trouble getting them to pop that way also, but she enjoyed trying. Saben was pretty good about sharing his pop-its, but was worried about running out of them to quickly. He was told, they would get some more when they went to get their fireworks at the end of the week, but he was sure that he needed more today. I was surprised that he was wanting to save some and not just go out and use them all up. Pretty mature for a 4 year old!

After Annika's nap, she decided to put this headband on. Lots of times, she won't wear things in her hair or on her head for very long, but she kept this on while we walked 2 blocks to a little neighborhood store, had a "push-up" ice cream treat, and went back home. We had a scary moment on the way back to their house, Saben was riding his bike on the sidewalk, when a car that was parked on the lawn of a house, on the other side of a truck, started to back up. The driver couldn't see us because of the truck, so she continued to back up. As soon as I noticed her, I told Saben to stop, he immediately put on his brakes, skidded a little bit and safely came to a stop, but if I hadn't noticed the car in time and he hadn't responded so quickly, he might have been badly hurt. It drives Kari nuts that cars park on the lawns around their neighborhood and now I understand the reason why, alot more!

Saturday With Seth

Yesterday we went to Todd & Betsy's house for a delayed Father's Day get together. We were supposed to go to their house last Sunday, but Todd was just getting over a cold, while Betsy was coming down with broncitus. Since we are going on a trip in a week (2 weeks from the weekend before), we decided to not expose ourselves to their germs and waited to get together this weekend. Seth, just passed the 6 mo. point last week, and was a happy camper most of the time, he just got a little fussy when he was hungry and again, when we tried to play a game and he wasn't getting as much attention. We played 4 or 5 rounds of speed scrabble and the winner of the round was in charge of holding Seth for the next round. I don't think anyone who was holding Seth won a round, but we had fun anyway.

We took a walk in a park by the beach before dinner, it was a beautiful day, with a nice cooling breeze off the water to keep it from getting to hot.

Grandma got to entertain Seth, while Todd and Betsy made a great dinner of roasted corn/red pepper soup, seared scallops with mint pesto and for dessert a wonderful chocolate concoction (sorry, I forgot, what it was called), topped with raspberries and whipping cream. Yum!

Bird Bath

When we first put in the pond, waterfall and stream, we had no idea that we were creating a bird bath. I have noticed the birds, more than ever this year, making use of the stream to take baths. This morning when I looked out, it seemed like they were lined up waiting for their turn, some were sitting on the rocks and seemed to be scolding the ones in the water, telling them it was their turn. The big birds, like the robin above, seem to especially like the deeper area of the stream, right before it goes back into the pond.

This robin was actually taking its bath in a shallow area of the pond, I had never noticed them there before. It's kind of hidden behind the tree branch and almost looks like another rock.

There are 2 smaller birds in this picture, bathing in the stream.

The small birds enjoy the deeper part also, at one point, there were 4 of these small birds someplace in the stream at one time. I enjoy watching them bathe whenever I get a chance to watch them for awhile.

Update: After I wrote this blog, I was looking out at the pond and saw a beautiful male goldfinch sitting on the ladder we have sitting in the yard. It looked like he was keeping watch while his mate took her bath. I wish I could of gotten a picture of him!

Dentist Again

Guess how I started the day today? You guessed it, another appt. For some reason, when I ate dinner last night a piece of the temporary crown on the lower left broke off. It caused a rough edge that was irritating my tongue, so I called the dentist office and went in to get it fixed. They decided to make another crown becuase it would be to hard to fix the broken one. So, there I was again, in the dentist chair, luckily for only about 30 minutes this time. I went on to Wal-mart and Fred Meyer, then went and had lunch. During lunch, it broke again! I could not believe it!! Back to the dentist I went and once again, they made me another crown. We are hoping that the third time is a charm. If you are counting, that makes 6 appts. in 2 days. Hopefully, the last for awhile! I am kind of nervous about something else happening to it while we are in Alaska, I don't know if there are dentists on cruise boats or not, if not I guess I'll have to make do. It's definately not something I really want to have to put up with for very long though.

4 Appointments in 1 Day

This was a crazy day as you can see from the title of the blog. God worked everything out because I wasn't told some important information when it came to scheduling my appointments. I thought I had everything scheduled just right, even giving me time to go work in the church library for awhile in between appts (it didn't happen). I had an appt. for a nerve conduction study first thing this morning at 9:45 in Everett, which meant I needed to leave our house by 9:15. I had no idea what that meant but I soon found out it was what I am calling, "shock treatments". He was trying to see how long it took the shock he put on my wrist to reach my fingertips in order to determine if I have carpal tunnel or not. It turned out that it did take to long and so he said I had moderate carpal tunnel and now I will be going to see a hand surgeon next week. My second appt. of the day was with the dentist and this is the one that God worked out. I was supposed to have my appt. at 2pm, I didn't know how long I would be at the dentist, but it's not usually that long, so when I was called and asked if 3:45 would work for another appt., I said it would be fine. Luckily, this morning before I left the house the dentist office called and asked if I could come in earlier, so I ended up going to the dentist at 12:20 and was there until 2:30! There is no way that I would have made my 3:45 appt, if I had waited until 2 to go in. I have been having trouble with sensitivity to cold and also some pain while chewing, which turned out to be caused by a crack in 2 different teeth. I now have a temporary crown on a tooth on the upper right and another one on the lower left. The permanent one won't be put on until we get back from Alaska, but it already feels alot better. The 3:45 appt was an cat scan and I thought I was having an ultrasound right after the cat scan. I waited 35 minutes, then asked if my ultrasound was at a different time and was told that it was scheduled for 4:50. No one had told me that, so I had to sit and wait a few more minutes for that. By the time I was done, it was 5:30. Luckily, we had already planned to go out to dinner, so I didn't have to worry about going home and cooking dinner. I don't know how many miles I put on my car today, but I went to Everett for the first appt., back to Marysville for the dentist, then back to Everett for the last 2 appts. Note to self - Don't schedule 4 appointments in 1 day again, especially if it involves going back and forth between Everett and Marysville!

Answers and Comments

Everyone who answered the question about what they would give up; TV, cell phone or the internet said TV. That agrees with the survey for the USA, 49% of people surveyed said that, although, responders over the age of 45, usually said their cell phones. That was actually what I said when I first read the question. I use my cell phone a lot less than the other 2 things. The other countries that said they would give up their TV's were China, Italy, Spain, France and India. Ken always says that TV shows in Europe are awful, so maybe that's part of the reason. Brazil was the only country that was willing to give up the internet and 3 countries, Canada, Germany and U.K. said cell phones. Apparently Canadians pay some of the highest rates for their cell phone plans, so that probably explains why they said cell phones. Thanks to those that responded, I appreciated getting your input.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day, Ken! Remember all the fun times we spent on beaches, looking for sea creatures and sometimes building forts out of driftwood with the kids! There are lots of good memories of time spent together ( even though I had a hard time finding many pictures of just Ken, Kari and Todd).

Happy Father's Day to my Dad, also! This is a favorite picture taken of my Dad with his 3 kids when we got our first horse, I'm not sure of the year, maybe 1964 or 65.

Happy Father's Day to all the other father's who read my blog also, especially Todd, since it's his first one. I hope you all had a great day!

Countries

Denaye's reply to my blog yesterday mentioned that there are to many countries to try and figure out who said what. So, I'm going to list some of the countries polled and see if you can guess which of the 3 items listed in yesterday's blog the people in the country would be willing to give up. They are: USA, Canada, U.K., France, Spain, Germany, Italy, China, India, and Brazil.

Question of the Week - June 19

Each month Reader's Digest has a question that they have asked people in different countries. They show the results of the question for the different countries and are somewhat interesting. I thought the question this month was a fun one, so I'm going to ask it here and see if the answers I get match the magazines results. The question is: If you had to give up one of the following, which would you give up; TV, cell phone or the Internet? Also, any guesses as to which countries had the majority, give one of those answers? Hint: there was at least 1 country for each answer.

Ring Troubles

This is the ring Ken got me for Christmas 2 1/2 years ago. It was replacing a different ring, with a pearl that kept falling out and I finally lost the pearl. When Ken got me this ring, he bought insurance to cover loss of the pearl and various other things, since we had so much trouble with the first pearl ring. During the first 2 years I had this ring, the pearl again fell out numerous times (I didn't keep track of how many times I had it repaired, but am going to keep track now). Sometimes I found the pearl and sometimes I didn't, and when I didn't they would replace the pearl. In December, I renewed the insurance plan to a lifetime insurance because I figured I would need it. Sure enough, already since Dec., the pearl has fallen out twice. The second time was just this week, and when I noticed the pearl was gone, I checked my pants pocket, sure enough it was in there. (I have found it in my pocket before, that's how I knew to check there.) I really love this ring, but it is getting tiring having to get it fixed every few months. The clerk at the store said she was going to tell them to make it more secure, but I don't know if they can really do that or not. If I hadn't bought the lifetime insurance, I would probably just give up on it, but since I did, now I have to get my money's worth. Maybe that's the way to think of it, I'm definitely getting my money's worth out of the insurance!

Surprises

Sunday afternoon while we were doing some more work outside, I saw a snake in our yard. It's the first time I'd seen a snake in our yard in years. We used to see them every once in awhile when we first moved here, but none for years. It really startled me and not being a big fan of snakes, now I'm afraid to do any weeding in the area where I saw it. Yes, it was just a garter snake, and a pretty one at that (orange and black),but it was a SNAKE, in my mind it doesn't matter what kind it is. There was a snake in my flowers and that's all I need to know to stay far away from that area. I seriously doubt that it is still in those flowers, but since I'm not positive, well, you know how it is.

This morning I got another surprise when I looked out my window. I saw a rabbit hopping across our yard. Now that's a surprise I could live with, at least until they started eating the veggies we planted! I could even do work in the area where I saw the rabbit. Again, when we first moved here over 20 years ago, there were lots of rabbits around, in fact the pasture below our house is named "Stampeding Rabbit", because there used to be so many rabbits in it and they would scare the horses when people rode through the field. But we haven't seen any rabbits for quite awhile, not even in our garage where one got accidentally trapped one time.

Now for the last surprise of the week, hopefully. When I was in Bellingham yesterday, Kari decided to drop the kids and me off at a park a couple of blocks from their house, so we could play and then walk home. Saben had gotten his bike out of the back of the car and went ahead with it. In a couple of minutes, he came back and said there was a man sleeping on the grass. I went and looked and sure enough there was what looked like a homeless man sleeping on the grass. Kari and I talked about what to do, she had told me before that the homeless seemed to be in that area a lot. I decided that I didn't like the idea of them taking over the park and preventing the neighborhood kids from playing there, so I decided that we would stay. (What I actually wanted to do was to make Annika scream her blood curdling scream, which might wake him up and get him to move on.) We played for about 45 minutes, talking and yelling back and forth, the only response from the guy was to turn onto his side. About 5 minutes before we left, a woman came and woke him up, got him to his feet and helped him move on. Based on the way he was staggering when she got him up, I thought he must have been sleeping so hard because he was drunk. In hind sight, maybe we shouldn't have stayed, I still don't like the idea of them taking over the neighborhood play area, I'm just not sure that staying to play anyway is the right solution.

Yard Work Again

Once again we spent most of the weekend working on the backyard project. Ken's Mom asked for a view of the whole yard, so that's what this first picture is.

We actually had some extra help this weekend. The 2 boys from church that are going on a missions trip with the youth group, are still working on earning money for the trip, so we asked them to come and help again. They re-stained both decks and helped with moving dirt from one place to another.

Kari, Saben and Annika came also, and while Kari helped Ken with making a couple of small berms, I got to play with the kids. We played in the sandbox first and Saben decided he wanted to make a castle, which consisted of making as big a pile of sand as we could before Annika destroyed it. Then he decided that the castle needed some flags, so we went and found some sticks for flags, which of course needed to have some paper attached to them so they looked like flags.

While Annika napped, he continued to make flags. This is a race car flag.

Monday With the Grandkids

We didn't do anything special on Monday, I just wanted to record what we did because it was special to me. Saben has really started enjoying legos. This started, I think, when we discovered a big tub of them at the house we rented in Cashmere for our family camp weekend. It was hard to pry him away from them to do anything else that weekend. When I went to their house Monday, I discovered that they had gotten out a bunch of Kyle's old legos and that was what we played with while I was there. Although he had made lots of space type things with Kyle, while I was there, I started making a building. It wasn't long before Saben joined me with his ideas of how the building should be made. There was a little tree that you could stand on a lego base and I thought it would be a nice addition to the house. Saben didn't really like the tree until I added a "light" (a small, clear, one piece lego that was red in color) to the top. All of a sudden all the clear, colored legos were Christmas lights, that needed to go all over the house and the tree. My job was to dig all the clear colored legos out of the box, while Saben put the "Christmas lights" on the house. At the end the house was very decorated with "Christmas lights" and I enjoyed seeing his imagination at work.

I also did some building with Annika. We used bigger blocks and built towers for her to knock down. I started counting the blocks with her and asked her to say the number after I said it. She was willing, most of the time, to repeat the number I said. She did very well in saying the numbers, I didn't know for sure if she could say them or not, the only one she had any trouble with was seven, the others were pretty clear. After her nap, while I was changing her, I started asking her if she was Grandma's girl. Her immediate response, of course, was "No!" I asked her again and when she said no, I said uh, huh, which is what she says for yes. She repeated uh, huh a couple of times, when I asked her the same question, but wasn't consistent. Still it was fun to get her to copy me and see her learning some new things.

Progress Is Being Made

These are pictures that I have taken over the last couple of weeks to show the progress being made on our yard remodeling project. The first one shows how we have taken out some old railroad ties by the rhody, smoothed it over, put bark in the area, and the drip water system, including by the lilacs.

This is the area that was shown on this blog with more dirt and graded smooth, ready to be seeded with grass, which has also taken place and you can see the grass starting to grow in a picture below.

Got some bushes planted by Todd's former window.

Grass is growing, luckily this area is shaded alot of the day, so it was able to grow, even during the hot weather.

We're finally ready to put wood chips around the garden boxes.
Looking good! Also, notice the potting bench Ken built over by the house.

Peonies and Ants - Part 2

Ken found this link that says that ants are attracted to peonies, but they aren't necessary for the peonies to open. For more info on the relationship of ants and peonies check out the link. Also my peonies are now blooming.

A Year Ago

I just looked at some of my blogs from the first week of June last year. I did several blogs on the rainy, cold weather of June 2008, what a change from last year! This year, the first week of June is way to hot, temps in the mid 80's, there is even a heat advisory in effect for today. I know, I know, mid 80's isn't high for lots of areas, but it is for the Seattle area. The weather channel does say that it will start cooling down this evening, that will be nice. It really feels, temp. wise, like July or August. The lawn is starting to look brown already and it's only June; that doesn't usually happen until at least July. We have been doing some watering of flower and veggie gardens and I'm really glad Ken has put in a drip water system in several of those areas. It's so nice to water things without having to change the sprinkler all the time. The good thing is that we have been able to eat dinner out on our deck a couple of times already, and that doesn't usually happen until later also.

Elliott Family Camp - Part 3

Debbie brought up a kids table that belonged to Deanna, Tim and I when we were kids. 3 generations have now used this little table and chair set.
She also brought a slip and slide that was used by kids and adults. I think Melia is queen of the slip and slide, with Kyle being the king. They were the most daring!
Even though it was hot, the middle generation, played badmitten for awhile. They enlisted the aid of a sprinkler after awhile to keep them cool while playing.

We got to meet the newest member of the family, our great-nephew Issac, who was 2 weeks old yesterday. We had people from age, 2 weeks to 81 years old, 4 generations, quite a range of ages.

There were a few "owies" acquired, but they were soon forgotten, as soon as a bandage was put on them.

One of the highlights for Saben was building a fire in the fire pit and roasting marshmellows for smores.

All the kids enjoyed their smores!

The last activity of the weekend was playing a round of miniature golf Sunday in Leavenworth.

...Elliott Family Camp - Part 2

We rented a beautiful old farmhouse in Cashmere for the weekend. We had 12 stay overnight on Friday, 16 on Saturday night, and 9 others joined us just for the afternoon on Saturday. The house had 5 bedrooms plus a loft where more could sleep, and 4 bathrooms, which is really handy when you have that many people around a house.

My Aunt Betty joined us for family camp this year. She lives in Texas, so this was her first year to be at family camp. She is getting acquainted with Seth, while Todd watches in open mouthed wonder.

We took a walk in the morning to see some horses that were pastured up the road. Annika decided it was fun to feed them, but not as much fun to pet them, especially if they sneezed while she was touching their faces.
Yummy, peanut butter sandwich.

Weekend Wedding and ....- Part 1

Friday evening our niece, Meera got married in Cashmere. Her dad walked her down the aisle, then joined his brother, who is a judge in Wenatchee, in performing the ceremony. Meera was gorgeous, and looked so happy. It was an outdoor wedding,which was nice, except that it got pretty hot sitting in the sun during the ceremony.

The bridesmaids were her sister, Amy (the tallest one), her friend, Jessica, and her niece, Lara, (Amy's daughter). They all looked so nice, all dressed up!

Meera and her new husband Zach admire their rings.

Meera is ready to throw her bouquet. There were a lot of family and friends of Deanna's at the wedding that I hadn't seen in a long time, so it was fun to see them again. I was amazed at how many times I was told how much I looked like Deanna. My side of the family (including myself) doesn't think we looked that much alike, but I was asked by complete strangers that knew Deanna, if I was her sister. One of Deanna's best friends, even glanced at me when I first arrived and thought I was Deanna. She quickly realized that couldn't be, but was taken aback at first by the resemblance. Several said it was our eyes, this picture was taken around 10years ago, do you think we look alike in it?