Contrasts

The hummingbird feeder during a whiteout.



Frost on the storm door backlit by the tree outside.



Said tree. I seriously love the color of that sky.

Couple of Christmas Leftovers

Jessie, look who I found!



Our beloved manger scene, by Rhetta.

Second Annual Rice Family Christmas Concert

Last year's concert, in case you missed it.

Cameron's Christmas

We celebrated Christmas for Cameron this morning.

We let him sleep late.
We let open all his gifts.
We let him take as long a shower as he wanted.
We took him "mountain climbing".
We downloaded a bunch of stuff for his new mp3 player.

Here are some snapshots:

Santa woke up early - around 4 AM.



Two wise men, Joseph, some animals, a tractor, and Santa. I think Christmas is complete, don't you?



He got some cool stuff like the mp3 player he picked out.



And matching watches that he picked out for himself and Rob.



He and I picked out new jammies for the kids.



Willon picked out a Thomas game for his birthday but didn't forget about it as easily as I'd hoped. He got to "open" it early because he absolutely would not stop talking about it.



After lunch we went out to Escalante Canyon to climb around the rocks around the H. A. Smith cabin.











Sitting on the heater vent like always.



... and another one of my girl for good measure. *wink

Neato Lights

GJ Pipe in Grand Junction, CO have this display outside of their offices/yard. The kids and I stumbled upon them last night just after dark. Both the train and the stage coach were on their own 18 wheeler flatbed and done entirely in rope lights. There was music playing, all the wheels were turning, and a nice man was handing out last year's candy canes - LOL. Another man climbed up on the train and pulled a lever that set off a loud whistle and some smoke came out the funnel. It was a neat surprise.

Pennies TMI

This is what stomach acid does to shiny copper pennies in, oh, about 48 hours. (There were only 4, not 5 - just FYI - I compared stacks of pennies to the x-ray to make sure.) They came out in the same neat little stack you saw in the x-ray.

Hey, Mickey! (Dance Fall 2010)

I unfortunately did not get this one on video but I got a few pictures. They danced to the song Hey, Mickey by Toni Basil.

Here she is posing at home. Such a ham sometimes, I swear. ♥



They were playing Duck Duck Goose while waiting for their turn on stage.



A cute profile shot.



On stage having a good ol' time.

My 3.5 ft, tall Piggy Bank

What you are looking at is Willon's trunk. The white spot in his stomach is a neat little stack of pennies. 5, count them, 5! pennies.

He'd been playing with them for days, nay months, with no incident. He likes to put them in a box and shake them around. He counts them incessantly, and makes shapes with them on the table.

Yesterday afternoon he came to me and said, "5 monies went down my tummy."

I get to monitor the other end until I'm satisfied they all come out or they'll have to scope him and remove them from above.

Yup, that's right. I'm on Doody Duty! woo

Decorating the Tree

We always try to do this when we have an extra kid to help. Being 13 he groused and griped about having to do it but I know secretly he'll remember it fondly.

p.s. The 3 year old only got 1 time out (for hitting the big kid in the back of the head repeatedly with his Santa airplane toy). Ka-chow!

Oh, and if you look closely you can see Lola's new comfy spot.

It's Dead, Jim.

My camera, that is. I smashed it. Imagine what slamming a car door on your camera full force would do. Well, with mine it spider webbed the LCD screen and it no longer shows anything but faint light behind all the cracks. In addition to that the power button only works the third or fourth time, the flash doesn't go off at all, and the auto-focus? nada. It is now literally just a point and shoot, or rather a point, shoot and cross your fingers.

Exhibit A

Stinky Bug?

Crackin' Me Up!

"I was a woman, when I was a, I was a woman of the day I may be the one who has nu-nus full grown, see? *shwh! shwh!*"



"Momma? I, when Momma? When a puffer fish really puffs up really big, like this. *poomp*"

2nd Grade Play

The entire 2nd grade at Rhetta's school did a play about the American Civil War. It was in poem form and each kid, or pair of kids, said one line. Some of them had costumes. Others did not. There was only one showing so seating was insane, but I think even blurry pictures are better than no pictures.

Waiting with her class.



Speaking her line.



Singing their song.

The Four Seasons From My Back Porch

Spring



Summer



Fall



Winter

Daddy Daughter Dance

Can I be any more in love??

Strawbeezies

Strawbeezies. That's what dibbuns call strawberries. Dibbuns are the young Abbey dwellers in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques whose residents prepare magnificent feasts from the foods they grow within the Abbey walls.

My strawberry patch started with 5 plants gifted to me by my mother-in-law. Each mother plant sends out runners and each runner can produce one or more new plants. Every spring the new plants flourish but the mother plants don't survive another season.

For the first few years my strawberries didn't do well at all. I thought it might be the hard clay they were growing in so I added compost. I thought they maybe needed mulch which was a mistake (think slugs!). One year I just left them alone having quite given up.

This year I decided to pay more attention. I peeled back the mulch and was delighted to find many plants alive and well.

Here it is mid-April, 2010 (that's a penstemon stuck in the planter on the right there that needs a new home but I haven't yet decided where):



I checked the soil every day and watered, watered, watered. Who knew they needed so much water?

This is the result (taken today, Nov. 11, 2010):



Runners even poured over the sides and new plants rooted all around the base. It's just the most beautiful thing I have ever done with plants, I think. We had so much more fruit as you can imagine, larger and sweeter too.

Now that I know what I am doing I will pay more attention to the new plants. Lots of them shoot off but many don't find soil.

Like these:

They're actually sitting on a rock and will die off without their roots in the soil. If I had been prepared for this I could have snipped them off and planted them in pots to root through the winter on my windowsill. Not quite there yet. Still learning (read: lazy).



As if the color isn't the most beautiful this time of year, the moisture you see on the leaves is what's left of this morning's snow. Many freezes and even snow and if you look closely you can see it's still blooming.



I'm not going to feel too bad about the plants I didn't save. I didn't even get my bulbs and tubers divided this year... again.

But I'm enjoying what's become of my gardens so far and am quite satisfied with the strawbeezies.