A Very Miss M Birthday

On Saturday, after going to Wally's World to get the ingredients, we went to pick up the grandkids. We were going to have a little celebration because Miss M just turned four on the 13th.

Grandpa and Miss M made cupcakes, the white kind with lots of color dots. Very colorful. Then they frosted the cupcakes with pink frosting. Because we all know that Miss M's favorite color is pink. (Or is that her mother's favorite color?)



And of course, we had to sample the frosting.



Then we had to write on the cupcakes with glitter gel, in red, blue and green. What fun!



And sample the gel after each letter!


Then we were ready for the party to start! See, there is a letter on each cupcake, along with sprinkles (we didn't leave anything out!). And the letters spell Happy Birthday MissM.



We lit the candles, which were white with colored dots on them, so that MissM could blow them out. See, there are four candles. MissM decided where to put them all by herself. She huffed and puffed and blew them all out!


Then everyone had to have a cupcake. G starts by licking off the frosting, but then he eats the cupcake too.


You can see that they were REALLY good!


Everyone ate the cupcakes (except for MissM who thinks eating cupcakes means licking off the frosting!).



Mr. CJ really liked the cupcakes. He just smashed the cupcake paper against his face and proceeded to eat.



You can see that MissM like hers!



Then Grandpa picked up the leftover cupcakes to put them away. The look on CJ's face was priceless. I have never seen such a mad face, and especially on him. He's normally very easygoing and cheerful. Not even temper tantrums. And for a two year old, that is amazing!
But here he is after the mad look. Doesn't he just look so forlorn?!




Everything worked out just fine. After all three had their turn in the bathtub, Miss M decided that she was hungry, so we had ICE CREAM! And went to bed......

As seen in a drive by....and more experimenting

On the way home from town today, I saw this in our lower pasture.



There are two of these fawns, along with their mother, who have been living down here. I haven't seen them for several days. Today we saw just the one. Unfortunately, I only had the little camera, not the new one, or the old one with the telephoto on it. So we had to make do.



I only got these two pictures that turned out. I now have to figure out how to make the pictures larger on Blogger, since I tried using bigger pictures, and they turned out the same size. But I do know now to make the size before I save for the web and not change the size from 100% to something smaller.

Oh well, live and learn. Looking forward to seeing the 3 grandkids this weekend. They should be back from Grandma Carol's, and we need to celebrate M's birthday.

Plus M and G both start school next Tuesday. Fall is coming.

How I spent my summer vacation

The other day, Clyde rode Kory on cows. He was helping Rob, the trainer, get ready for a show. The cows were all bunched up at the end of the arena for cutting practice. The trainer's daughter was drafted to keep the cows in a bunch. So here she sits, while the guys play with the cows. What better way to spend your summer vacation? On the back of a horse, or catching tadpoles in the ponds we have from all the rain, or riding your horses. Outside all day long without a care in the world.



Except, this day, she kept wanting to go get a drink, like, "Dad I want a drink (it's getting a little boring here ya know!)" Dad's response? "Not now!"
He has his priorities!

Here's Clyde chasing a cow. Kory hasn't forgotten how to cut cows, and she really likes it! (Kory is the horse).



And another shot of Clyde. Rob is on Reno, Wayne's appaloosa mare. She's a cool horse, and pretty too.



And what was I doing? Using my new camera and getting used to it. On another note, I'm not sure how these pictures are going to look. Clyde showed me another way to get these ready for the Web in CS4, and I'm sure I have some experimenting to do.

Today I found some free fill dirt on craigslist, Clyde called the guy and now we're waiting for him to call back when he'll be there and we can pick up dirt!

A little of this, a little of that.

It's been a while since I've posted out here. No real reason, just lazy I guess. But we have accomplished a lot. We went to C's birthday party. He's 2 now!

We have been collecting seeds from all the wildflowers (weeds) along the road. Which was a good thing, because the county came thru today and mowed all the flowers down. We are going to try to grow them next year. Our garden is full of flowers, did you know that the farmer's market is a great place to get plants? Well it is. We have a poor basil plant, it's not going to survive. The poor thing was too skinny and we've been pulling off the leaves to spice up the mozarella and tomatoes that we've been eating.

Plus we've been taking lots of pictures with the new camera, only a few of which I've included here.

Here's G at the lake where we went fishing. It was a novelty for him, because he and Grandpa went and caught grasshoppers for bait. Who knew that you could use grasshoppers to fish. Of course, we had to go get him a rod and reel too, and some hooks and sinkers.



Here's princess M fishing. She and C have rods and reels that already have the fish attached. (not going to be catching anything, and M's is a pretty pink fish).




And here's a picture of princess M casting. She really has some form/technique here. And the fish went pretty far out into the lake!




Next we went and sat at a picnic table and had a picnic. These kids sure do like to eat outside. Doesn't matter what you feed them, they'll eat it outside. We usually take PB & honey sandwiches and have crystal lite drinks. They sure do like to eat that!

We were sitting at the end of the lake near the train tracks, and along came a train. It was noisy!



Mr. C had to climb up on the table to cover his ears.



The new patio is coming along. We have the railroad ties in place, and are now looking for dirt to fill it. Then sand and bricks and it'll be done. I'm sure hoping it'll be done by labor day, but Clyde hasn't found any dirt yet. And he's so lucky, I have three railroad ties left over that I can use at the bottom of the front yard to delineate the path and keep all the dirt from flowing downhill. (He's thrilled that I've thought of that! LOL!)

I have lots of flowers outside, and some of the sunflowers are taller than Clyde, but none of them have bloomed yet. I'll have to post pictures of the garden soon.

We watched Wayne's horses and Rob's horses over the weekend while they went to an Appy show. Wayne has two of the cutest little foals I have ever seen. One colt and one filly. The colt is the little brown and white one. He's friendly, and curious, and a little pushy. But we had fun with him. This is the colt.



The little filly is also an Appy, but she is solid colored. Her dam is a leopard spotted Appaloosa, quite pretty and very nice. What I liked about this filly, besides her friendliness, was how she moved. We played with her, and she has the moves of a cowhorse. She is so quick and lively. I also liked her dark coloring and the little crescent moon she has on her forehead. You can see it in this picture.



Well, now I have to go put some more blog entries together. Mustn't let so much time go by again. School starts for us next Monday, and Clyde will have some watercolors to show off!

It's Official

We just got caught by the economy. So we're looking for possibilities and opportunities.

In My Backyard

This has been a very wet spring here in Colorado. The snow started the first week in April, and continued every weekend. Then the rain started in May for every weekend and continued into June....All the way into July. So, we got a lot of color in the form of wildflowers.



We also got quite a few of these little guys, but since it's getting hot and dry now they are going away.




We have these yellow flowers. I don't know what all the flowers are so I call them yellow or pink or blue flowers. I know, quite original!




These are wild yellow snapdragons. Yes, they do grow wild around here.




This is a wild rose, and they are all over the place this year. You could almost call them a weed if they're growing in the wrong place.




Here are some purple flowers that grow on a stem, I don't know what they are.




Here are some purple flowers that almost look like snapdragons.




I found these pretty pink flowers by the fence. There are not many of these.




No flowers here, I was too late to get a shot of the irises. These are seed pods, and hopefully they'll spread the seeds around. I started with one patch of these wild irises and now they have grown to three separate patches. They grow wild, I don't do anything.




Here is a picture of the blue Colorado columbine, the state flower. I have seen these flowers growing wild on 10,000 foot mountain passes.




Here are some flowers that I think look like blue bells, even it that's not their real name.

I didn't show the thistle, that we were spraying when I found all these flowers. The thistle is a noxious weed, and very hard to get rid of. Our big patch, when we moved in, we have gotten almost all gone, and that place is now full of wild flowers.

Tomorrow we find out about Clyde's job. Wells has started cutting back on personel after buying Wachovia.

Stay tuned.

Happy July 4th -- late.....

July 4th turned out to be another rainy day here. We went to Bill and Diane's (James in-laws) for a cookout, but no fireworks. Although we did see fireworks on their street, and then on the way home there were several places having fireworks.
However we didn't have to fight any traffic, so that was good. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are the ones I did take.


Solitare and OC. Apparently OC is allowed on the furniture as long as it's covered.



James and Solitare.



James and Diane in the kitchen.



Clyde, Bill, and Baxter the dog.



Clyde and OC. Clyde was the first one to invite OC onto the furniture. We had lots of good food, peach margaritas, and company.

Clyde and I didn't get home until after 10 p.m. So I slept until Amanda got up at 8 a.m. the next morning. Did I say that we took Amanda with us? We did, and boy was she tired when we got home. She never sleeps that late! Then didn't accomplish anything all day Sunday except watch about 4 episodes of Criminal Minds and then went back to bed.

The 4th was fun, and a great way to remember all of our service men and women who are serving around the world to keep us safe. And to remember all those who served before. To them go a big THANK YOU!

And apparently, we are going to get more rain tonight. Five days in a row of rain, twice on Friday. The yard is very wet, and the horses have pools in their runs again.