Cookies

For Father's Day this year, the girl's and Bryan made cookies for the 'grandpa's'. Man oh man, did they make cookies too. Bryan had done to the store earlier to get chocolate chips for the cookies and came back with a few variety's-I asked him how many did he plan on making since he was going to be eating them? He left that decision up to the girl's-I went and took a nap, a long nap; it had been a long week.

There were regular chocolate chip, white chocolate chip and butterscotch.

There was lots of dough made with lots of effort and love and taste-testing.

And there were funny faces while stirring in LOTS of chips!!!

Remember, I was sleeping.

The ready to be made into balls, put in the oven, 'chip' loaded dough.

They turned into marvelous cookies! Lots of marvelous cookies.

This was the first round of cookies out of the oven. Did I mention that they made lots of cookies? Like 4 batches?

Random II

Here are a few photos of 'things' that have been going on around here. There is never a dull moment and the work is never done; once a project is complete, then there's the maintenance.
Lizards--For any of you that have known me for a long time, like when I was still a kid( I still am at heart), catching lizards was one of my most favorite things to do during the summer. I spent countless hours thanks to my mom teaching me how and my dad for building the cages to keep them in. At one point I had 20 lizards. I found them fascinating and by lots of reading and studying, learned what different species there are in our area(there's a lot of them), their favorite foods, what ones could be kept together and what ones couldn't, what ones would tame down and of course how to keep them healthy and happy in captivity. I would only keep them usually for a couple months at the most and let them go; occasionally a few stayed for the winter thanks to my mom for letting me keep meal worms in the fridge to feed them.
This is a Sagbrush lizard that Jessie rescued from the cat. They have similar markings to the Western Fence lizard aka "Bluebelly's", but their scales are smaller and they don't have the blue patch on their throat.

This is a young Desert Horned Lizard aka the "Horny toad". Jessie and her friend Alania caught him. They really like ants but he also enjoys meal worms. Of most of the desert lizards, they are pretty docile and 'slower' running making them quite easy to catch.

Hank enjoying the 'dog days of summer' just laying around.

A couple weeks ago when it started warming up, Bryan was getting the swamp cooler ready and we started hearing a 'hissing' sound. After listening fro a moment, we thought it was water leaking, I realized that it was a ticked-off snake somewhere nearby. We found him coiled up with no sense of humor left under the garbage can about 6ft away from where we were at. We think that he was probably under the trees in the weeds by the swamp cooler getting out of the heat when Hank ran him over chasing imaginary shadows and fly's and whatever that dog thinks he see's. Needless to say, he was not impressed.

This particular snake is a Gopher snake or a 'bull snake' and is a good one to have around so to ease the stress on him I got a long stick and after a few attempts(which really made him mad) I was able to move him outback where he gladly slithered off. Last year we had a few snakes show up and Jessie thought it was fun to catch them but I used this snake as a good example of when to leave even a 'good' snake alone.

This is the trailer that we use to haul our bobcat/skid steer around on. It was in desperate need of a new floor so Bryan and a friend, Casey, have been working on it. They started it last year and its slowly making progress. Both of these men seem to have so much time on their hands I just don't understand why its not done.(sarcasm)

The goats are finally being used to their full potential. Instead of me bringing them the weeds(which means I have to pull them, rake them and then haul them-to much work), we have taken them to the weeds. This particular area I thought would take them about 2wks to clean up-not, it lasted 5 days!!!!

There was a good variety of weeds. They thought that they were in 'goat heaven'-all the weeds to eat and obstacles to climb. For any of those that are partial to Land cruisers, the Land cruiser was not hurt during this operation.

Here is the ditch out back that we use to 'irrigate' the trees. I had to re-dig it back out thanks to the gophers this spring. This was made quite easy by running a roto-tiller down it and then raking out the dirt but the gopher holes that keep caving in is making it a challenge to get water to the end. I am quite shocked that water can run down these holes for hours and never fill in or better yet, the water starts coming back up over 30ft away!!!!

Here is the space for the garden that has been in the making for over a year to but I finally got it completed and is now planted and growing things-lots of things!!! Things that were planted and many things that weren't. The chickens were doing a fabulous job of keeping it completely weed free, but since I put a chicken/rabbit proof fence up and tilled it, the weeds are rejoicing with all of the water-I'm not!!!

Black Fur Frenzy

There are 2 new faces at our place. They're both cute, They're both black. They're both babies-7wks to be exact. They're both furry. They're both full of lots of energy. They both like to attack things. They're both vocal. They're both a different species. One is male and the other female. One is small but big at the same time and the other is just small but big in attitude. They both have sharp teeth and claws. One is here to stay and the other will probably end up staying.

This is Jon. He's a black German shepherd. He came from the same breeder that we got Lee from. At this point I don't think he is going to be as layed back as Lee is.

He already knows what he wants and has had no trouble making himself right at home.

He's not that innocent - ha ha ha!!!

This is Hope. The kitten that I was certain was dead when I found her and was certain she wasn't going to survive the night after I realized that she was barely alive. She is now making up for 'lost' time and is living life literally to the fullest of her 'little' ability. She thinks its fun to chase Brooklyn(my niece) thru the house and is certain that everything needs to be brought into submission including my legs, the bookshelves, the doors, Jon, etc.....nothing is safe!!!
However, she's not out of the woods yet. She has a large umbilical hernia that needs to be repaired; just waiting for her to get a little bigger and up to full health(I thinks she's there).

Hope does occasionally slow down to charge her batteries but as you can see she is waiting for Jon to wake up. Her fiestyness may or may not work out for her good when she gets to explore the great outdoors. My last cat that would attack dogs didn't last to long. Unfortunately, he found out that not all dogs will run away from him when he starts to chase. The coyotes like this and I have to admit that its funny to see a big dog run away from a cat but in the long run, well, that's not the way its suppose to work.