Backyard "Wildlife"

Friday evening my Grandma, mom, Becky, Sara and her girls all came over for dinner. We had a wonderful evening watching the thunderstorm blow in and just enjoying each others company. The girls all had a blast playing together; they hate it when its time to go and us "adults" actually got to sit down and.....chit-chat!
While sitting outside, we were able to watch a monarch butterfly and some type of oriel that was very busy picking flowers off of my locust trees and dropping them.

Lovin the nectar from the russian olive flowers.

Felix thought he would join us too but was soon bored and decided that he needed to go terrorize Ruby.(our black and white cat) He's the one that likes to stir things up.

Sara. She's faking this smile. She found out that Jessie and Marisa had a water fight earlier and the chair that she sat down in was in the middle of it.

Becky had a blonde moment today. She went golfing and put sunscreen on her face and shoulders but forgot her legs and neck sooo....... after caking on the aloe vera with lidocaine she is sitting with minimal pain at the moment; the severity of the burn really set in later that night. OUCH!!

Here was the busy little bird that was having a grand time picking the flowers off of my trees and just dropping them as fast as he could despite the fact that we were sitting under these trees.

89 flowers left on the tree, 89 flowers left on the tree, take one down, pass it around, 88 flowers left on the tree...................

He was really into what he was doing because I was standing right under him taking these pics. Talk about being focused on a job!

Random

What have we been up to? All sorts of things!! We got our garden planted a few days ago; we're almost done with getting our firewood; now that the weather is getting hot there are lots of things to water and of course numerous weeds to pull; we're pretty much done with school-yippeee!!!!; there are fences that need to be put up and some that need to be re-done, weeds to continue to mow and pull etc.......
However, I did have a relaxing evening with my grandma, who came down to visit, my mom and my sisters last night. I made dinner(shocking, I know); Texas Two-Step chicken-I highly recommend it-its good and fast.
Anyhow, here are a variety of pics of whats been going on.

Jessie helping plant the garden. Marisa decided that she needed a break and was going to be the queen while we were the servants planting her garden. Hmmmmm........

The mighty gardeners-(this was before Missy decided that she needed to be "delegating")

The wood that we have brought home with much sweat and thankfully little to no blood or tears. (one more trip to go-any volunteers?)

The dogs enjoying the cooler evening but wishing that they could join us for dinner.

Everything is turning so green and the flowers are blooming like crazy. I have more flowers on my Purple Robe Locust trees than leaves-they smell wonderful too.

Brenna has established dominance on the dog pillow on the deck-this is her domain now(for a little while)

Pansy's

More pansy's

Petunia

Wild rose

And snowballs in May

Lots of snowballs!

My Iris's are almost done.

The Russian Olives are full of little yellow flowers, a wonderful smell and tons of moths!!!!

Random thoughts;

Do you realize that June starts in 2 days, summer officially starts in 22 days, Thanksgiving is only 180 days away and Christmas is 205 days away.

Chicks!!

The first "flock" of chicks have arrived-on Monday actually. I'm a little late on getting this posted since now it is Friday, sorry, but I've been busy, as usual-its that time of year(which seems to last all year for me but I'm not complaining-its self induced, usually).
Anyhow, we got 27 chicks on Monday. 26 of thees birds are the Jumbo Cornish Rocks and they will all be butured in 8wks-they grow that fast. The 27th little chick is an extra that the company will send you as a gift, I guess; actually its probably an extra-some sort of "exotic" breed. I think that its a Lakenvelder(whatever that is)-I'll know more as it continues to get its feathers.

Here are the cornish rocks in the new coup-gettin' all settled in.

Getting a much needed drink after a long flight.

Chicks are so cute!!

Showin' them off.

There's the odd ball hiding.

Definitely stands out-this one we are not eating, unless its a mean rooster, so I let the girls go ahead and name it.......

"Sparkles" if its a girls and "Spark" if its a boy.

They wanted to name the other too but I explained to them that we down name our food plus they wouldn't be able to tell them apart-they're all going to be white.

The next bunch of chicks will be here June 15th and they are going to be the layers. We ordered a very wide variety of chicks for this bunch; we should be getting a wide variety of colored eggs from them-should be fun. Feel free to come and see them!!!!

Fun in the Sun

Warning: Lots of cute pictures of cute little girls!!
Since the weather has been warming up the girls have been wanting to ride more. Marisa has decided all of a sudden that she can ride--all be herself and is quite proud of it. She has been doing really well; has no problem with being persistent enough to get the horse moving and in the direction that she wants it to go. Imagine that-my sweet little Marisa being "bossy"; of course in her sweet little way.

All attitude-cute attitude

Can we go ride now??

Jessie is doing really well with riding too. This is her 3rd year of riding by herself. She is starting to show good balance and control. Her favorite thing is to make the horse lope. She wants to show and rodeo-we'll see. Right now she is giving Sierra some good back scratching.

Lookin' way to grown up.

Best buds!!

Finally on the horse and lookin' good.

The "Princess wave".

Arm is starting to get a little heavy.

Notice; she isn't holding the reins-apparently she's not worried about a thing in the world-definetly getting braver.

Time to start trotting. Yep, she's getting braver-this is only her 3rd time by herself.

Doing good.

Her she comes.

Woops! starting to lose the hat.

Jessie waiting patiently for her turn. Yep! she is growing up fast and is getting really tall.

Ummmm....I'm not sure what was going through her head..........

but it was really big!

Jessie tall and proud in the saddle.

Missy's turn to sit on the gate and wait. So serious.

There we go!

Jessie making her way around the arena in a nice jogging pace.

Time for some speed.

Here they come.

Notice how green the mountains are right now. Its so nice. There are a lot of wildflowers in bloom right now; its quite pretty.

Lopin' along.

Serious in definitely gone now. Apparently, whatever it was was really funny.

About time to put good ol' Nina up and come in to eat dinner but sometimes you just gotta ride a little bit more even if its just around the house.