This & That

Spring and San Diego Boy

San Diego Boy has been a little at loose ends. He officially starts work wrangling grape vines and weeds down the street today, but I haven't been able to find enough slave jobs to keep him constantly going from dawn until dusk.   He's the type of boy who likes messing with objects that have buttons. Buttons fascinate the kid.  Experimenting with what they can do keeps him occupied for hours.  So every once in a while, he likes to mess with my camera.  It tends to make me slightly nervous, but I try to tuck that away, knowing that I could have a budding Ansel Adams on my hands.  He headed into the back yard the other day and caught a few pictures that were pretty good.   It shows that spring is in full swing in my yard.  The tulips on the north-facing side of the house are just right, the ornamental crabapple tree is in full bloom and looks like they are attracting some kind of nectar-loving moth.  We see these every once in a while and they are pretty big for a moth...maybe a 3 inch wing span.

The Lady in the Bathtub

So,  I left you with the question of how you can use a Bleeding Heart blossom to entertain a child.  Well really, it's something you can show to anyone of any age. And here's how it works.  (I have to remind DD not to pick every blossom of the plant....she would because she thinks it's neat to do.)
Take a blossom and hold it like this:

Then pull the bottom, rounded edges slightly apart like this and voila!  A lady in a bathtub!

Can you see it?  Keeps my 13 year old occupied. :)

We Have a Winner!

I used random.org to generate a number for this month's giveaway.   Very handy site for pulling a number out of a figurative hat.  And the number is 3!  That means Lynne, who is poster number three is our winner this month! I'll get this out to you in the next few days, Lynne.  Thanks everyone, for playing along, and come back next month for something new.
The fishermen made it home, and while they didn't catch anything as huge as in the pictures I showed you, they had a good time.

A cryptic question for you all.....how can you use what's in this photo to amuse a child?  The answer in a day or two.

Farewell to the Forties!--Installment #4

Today is the 17th, which means that we have another installment of the "Farewell to the 40's" giveaway. I've been working on a little project for you this week.  I'd done 4 layouts from a recent assigned SA kit and decided I would do this with some of the scraps.  This is a tiny mini-album, all ready for photos. The pages on the ring measure 2 3/8" wide by 3 3/8" high. They are each slightly embellished and any paper edges have been left loose so you can tuck photos in under the patterned paper, if you like.   In between the photo pages are tags or die cuts for journaling.  Only the front sides of the cards are decorated.  The whole album fits into the little "deck of cards" box.   Leave your name in the comment section of today's post and you will be eligible for the random drawing, which I will announce tomorrow morning.  You may leave names until 9 pm MDT tonight.

Heeeeeere, Sturgeon, Sturgeon....

By a show of hands, how many of you know what a sturgeon is? A sturgeon is a big fish.  A really big fish.  The kind of fish a lot of caviar comes from.  DH has been sturgeon fishing before in northern Idaho, but the last time he went was in pre-digital days for him, so I don't have any pictures of the sturgeon he actually caught.  These are random images I Googled.  I'm not related to any of these people....or the fish.
DH and San Diego Boy are presently up in northern Idaho in Hell's Canyon looking for these.  They had kind of a hard time getting there.  They drove over to Boise on Wednesday night for a 7 AM flight Thursday morning, only to find that their flight had been arbitrarily canceled...I guess they hadn't sold enough seats.  They were stranded and the only solution was for them to drive it, which is what they did, but they lost most of their first fishing day doing it.  Now, before you start wondering how in the world we'd eat one of these huge fish, it's catch and release fishing.   This comes under the heading of, "Gee, honey, I really need to do some of these fun things with San Diego Boy before he leaves and we don't see him again for 2 years. I'm really just doing this all for him."  Said in his most genuine, aw-shucks voice.  Uh-huh.

Tomorrow......another giveaway......
 

A New Family Member!!

I am preempting pictures of my FTT40's project for something more exciting.   My baby brother and his family have been going through the really grueling process of adopting a little girl from China.   They submitted the pile of paperwork late last year and have been waiting to hear if they have been matched.  He called me yesterday to tell me that they had their referral and had 24 hours to have her medical records looked over by their pediatrician and to decide whether to accept the referral or not.  Let me introduce you to my new little niece, Lu Qian, soon to be known as Sophie Mei.  She is 2 1/2.  Isn't she the most gorgeous little thing?  They hope to be able to pick her up in China before the Olympics, if they can get things finalized.   Sophie will join her Mom & Dad, an older sister with gravity-defying hair and three older brothers who will all bombard her with love.  They have wanted this for a long time and it's just so wonderful to see it happen for them.

Can You Canoe?

I've mentioned before that my DS#2, aka Astro-Physics Boy, is a very out-of-the-box thinker. He was the one that always "got" those spatial puzzles where you only had to move one toothpick or one coin...you know the ones I mean. Right now he and his cute wife are back east going to grad school.  They are going to become proud parents this fall.  (Waving---hey there, sweeties, hope the sweet DIL is feeling good today---she's been sooooo sick! Give the little varmint a squeeze from Grandma!)  Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Like all the males in my family, DS loves the outdoors.  Moving to a new area of the country, he's had to check out the local fishing spots.  His biggest complaint was that it's really difficult to fish from the bank anywhere because the area is so overgrown and brushy.  He came home one day to find 5 ticks attached to him and his clothing.  (HATE the idea of ticks....just gives me the heebie-jeebies.)  So to work around this problem, he went to the internet and bought himself a canoe.  Yes, a canoe.  One of those tippy, wobbly water craft.  Perhaps now is the time to mention that whenever I have nightmares about my children, it always involves water.  Years and years of nightmares.....always water.  So my first question was, "Did you buy life jackets along with the canoe?"  Perfectly reasonable mother question, right?  He assures me he did. 
Now, since he lives in an apartment, there was the small issue of storage.  You can see he solved that problem handily.  You just need to step over the canoe every now and then.  (He's since informed me that he's figured out how to hang it up on his carport ceiling.)  There's also the question of transport.  No problem.  Have pool noodles, will travel.  Yes, those are pool noodles  under the canoe so it won't scratch the paint on the car.   I'm not quite sure this is legal, though.  You still need to check that out, hon.  But ah, the outdoor bliss....the oneness with nature....the tranquility of paddling around on the tick-less water.   Where there's a will, there's a way.
Tomorrow.....photos of this month's "Farewell to the 40's" giveaway project I've been working on this week. :)

Rhubarb, Love It? Hate It?

During many years of moving from place to place for each phase of extended schooling, one of the things we really craved was a place to plant a few tomatoes.  So I guess we're really overcompensating a bit for those years of apartment living when we couldn't have a garden space by always planting a very large garden. Perhaps it can be traced back to this man.  This is my maternal grandfather.  He died when my mom was nine, so I never met him, but according to her, he liked to have some plants in the dirt. Here he is with the family's beloved English bulldog, Spud.  In the next generation,  my mom never really had a garden until we moved to Utah, right before my senior year of high school.  Now she's out there as soon as the soil can be worked so she can get her peas in.  I can very rarely get any of my slaves to get things going that early, although I love fresh garden peas.  Maybe at the farmer's market....
Well, back to my mom.  My mom has always had her peas and she's also always had a big rhubarb plant.  Me?  I'm not a big fan of rhubarb.  Red celery has never been that appealing, but my DH's grandmother always had a rhubarb plant, also, and made what he calls cobbler (which is really rhubarb with an amazing amount of sugar in the bottom of the pan and a cake batter on top).  It makes him nostalgic and brings back good childhood memories for him.  So several years ago we started the great rhubarb experiment.  I would buy a start every spring from the local gardening center, plant it, water it and it wouldn't come back the next year.  Finally about 5 years ago, a good friend said she was dividing her hill and would I like a start?  I thought it would meet the same fate, but every year so far, it's bravely come back and I've managed to pull off a few stalks to make the required cobbler.   Yeah, the rhubarb is a pretty red color and one of those first spring growing things, but I still don't like it.  The things we do for the sake of nostalgia.....

Garden Fashion

Getting the garden ready to plant is a whole-family activity. Quite honestly, I'm not sure how DH and I will do it when all the extra hands leave the nest.   It also requires really old, yucky clothes.  But not when you're 13, apparently.  DD got herself dolled up for the day, but drew the line at the footwear.  She clomped out to the garden in a pair of her older brothers' snow boots. It was a little funny.  First she tried flip flops, then her tennis shoes, which are a little more stylish than just regular running/walking shoes, so she changes them again.  And this is the look we ended up with.  In the first picture, you can see that she's more than a little annoyed that I'm snapping away.  That is the 13 year old Look of Death.  She uses it a lot.  And since nothing has happened to any of us, we have concluded that the Look of Death doesn't really carry any physical threat so we pretty much ignore it now. 
Funny thing about my particular 13 year old.  She has a hard time maintaining the Look of Death mentality when she's not being required to do really physical labor.....and the sun's out....and the Jungle Cat is swiping at her brother's boot laces. 

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope you are all having a great day!  I am the first one up here and it's quiet, so I am getting some catch up computer time.   One disadvantage of having DS#4 home....and it's a minor one, so I'm not whining too loudly, is that I have to compete for computer time sometimes.
We had a good outside day yesterday getting the garden ready to plant. An added bonus was that I took my camera out while we did and got a few pictures.  It seems like a while since I was able to get that done, but in reality it was just since the SGB was here. In any case, here's some garden prep from yesterday.  This is how it starts out, with big, raised furrows and soaker hoses on top.  The wiggly snake look at the bottom is for the pumpkin patch.  Last fall we had a bumper crop of pumpkins, and I only had 2 kidlets at home.  Picture that whole section of the garden just full of them, so we invited several people from church to bring their kids over to our pumpkin patch and get pumpkins for Halloween and to decorate their doorsteps.  It was fun to see very little kids trying to maneuver big pumpkins around. 
I had my jumbo lens on, so even though I was at the opposite end of the garden from DS#4, I could take this shot and you can still see his manly beard stubble.  He's really proud of that manly beard stubble.   At DD's insistence, I also got random shots of our crazy cat.  Little Smokey is pretty young...actually in cat years she's about the same age as my DD, which might explain a few things.  When we come out to work in the garden, she automatically goes into Jungle Cat mode and likes swiping at our shoelaces and other random things like dead, dried out flowers.  She was rolling right in the dirt in the top photo where my DD is teasing her (the similarities between the two of them are growing as I type) and the "I'm exhausted and need a rest in the cool grass." photo at the end.