Merry Christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We in Washington even had a "white" Christmas; if you count the 30 minutes that it snowed Christmas afternoon. I am currently dog sitting my principals puppy, enjoy the pictures.

Human foot update

The foot is doing well, unless the occasional 2nd grader steps on it. I have not, nor did I develop a bruise, however it has started to itch like crazy! I wonder if it is like a scar that is healing, it itches all the time. At least I am not 30 something and wearing a bright pink cast while trying to teach school! Thank you Lord for small blessings.

Nature

It is common knowledge that I very much, utterly and most decidedly do not like spiders . . . this past weekend, I found a lovely spider had spun a huge web among my volunteer sunflowers. The web was huge and I had to admit, that in their natural habitat (ie not my bathtub) the spider and web were an amazing engineering accomplishment.

The closeup sunflower picture is spider free.


At my dad's house I came across several different and interesting looking mushrooms. (click on the images to make them larger)

TV vs. human foot

Just in case anyone wanted to know, it is possible to drop a 7 year old, 27 inch tv on ones foot and not brake ANY bones in said foot. It is however, not recommended because it is quite painful and it will result in the dr. laughing at you. Apparently bruised bones are serious but the chosen method of bruising said foot bones was funny to said dr. Ouch.

October Already

So, school has started and I can not believe it is already October. I have 9 of the same children from last year in my class this year and three new ones, 12 students in all! Compared to last years excitement and issues, this year has been very calm.

My dad came to school about two weeks ago to help me plant crocus, tulip and daffodil bulbs and to ready a "hole" for the children to plant there own bulbs. These pictures are backwards, so the after (end of planting) picture is first, not bad for a VERY rocky patch of dirt.

Cause and Effect

Jasper - Bird watching from inside a planter.

What a cutie!

Oops!

What happened! I wonder who did this?

What? I didn't do anything, I was sitting in this chair the whole time!

Birds and Cats

Relaxing Cats
Prior to leaving for vacation, in June, I was informed that I had to clear everything off my deck so it could be rebuilt. Well, having lived here for 10 years I was not looking forward to that project. A frantic phone call to my dad secured a helper and within two hours we had everything inside my apartment. We had to relocate plants into the bathroom so the cats would not eat them, my dad took home several planters and the extras were left in the living room. Over the last few weeks I have found several inchworms in my bathroom and spiders spinning webs in my dining room! I finally gave up, called the office and informed them that I didn't care if my building trim was painted or not, I was moving everything back to the deck. It has been a work in progress for the last few days. I think I am happy with how things look. The cats and the birds don't seem to have any complaints.

4th of July

My apartment just shook to the foundation from an amazingly loud and powerful firework. My cats are freaking out and have hidden themselves away somewhere safe in the living room.

I spent today cleaning up my deck and bedroom. Somehow, even as organized as I am, during the last two weeks of school every thing just gets away from me; from report cards, to inventory of my entire classroom, to graduation and then vacation a day after school is out - let's just say that I now have a completely cleaned out closet, a dining room table that I can actually eat off of and most of my office desk is now usable.

For the past few weeks the outside of my apartment building was being painted, what an experience that has been. I think they are finished with my deck, so maybe in the next few days I will be able to replant all my plants and I will finally have my living room back - I had to store all my deck stuff in the living room-doesn't sound so bad to you? Well consider this, I had inch worms in my bathroom, spiders spinning webs in the kitchen and slugs on my living room carpet! ugh!!

Baby LOVE!

No it's not my baby, but I am now an (unofficial) aunt. My best friend of 20+ years, just had a baby! What a doll! I think my uterus is ticking . . . any one in blog-land want to send me a 30+ year old, single, Christian male? I am sure God has plans, however, it's never easy to wait, especially for something as beautiful as this baby.

Travel to the heat!

My friend from college and I took a road trip to visit my sister. My sister loves the heat and let's just say that I was melting (and somewhat grumpy) with the 100 degree weather. It was great to visit with her and meet all her friends. I am so proud of her new job and home. Congrats!

Fledge Day was Saturday!

They are getting restless. Look at those eyes! What cute faces you guys have.

Saturday I heard a lot of noise in the box, wings flapping and such. The adults were going crazy! I saw black flashes coming out of the nest box. I finally opened up the box and saw there was only one baby left!
After running to the store, I checked the box again and they were all gone! One of them ended up in my neighbors flower pot. I was looking forward to getting some photos of the fledglings, but it was not to be. There is one egg left in the box, near 3 o'clock. It was a dud and never hatched!

Look at how big they have grown!

This picture was taken on Wednesday. There are six, but one is being squished! These are about lifesized.

I miss-counted!

After sitting out on my deck for about 45 minutes, waiting for the adults to leave the trees and come to the nest box on my deck, I gave up and checked on the babies. There are actually 6 of them! They are so tiny, this picture is misleading. So far everything is looking good. The adults do not let any other birds near the feeder, so I think the babies should be safe from attack and such.

Oops, sorry to bother you!

I thought I would take another picture of the babies. I usually tap on the bird house just before I open it up, just in case there is an adult in the house. This time however, no one flew out of the house, so I assumed it was save to lift the lid. I think I was as surprised as the adult bird! What a picture though!

5 baby chickadees!

I have had a bird house up for about 3 years or so. The last two years there have been eggs, but no hatched chicks. Yesterday I was weedding the plants on the deck and thought, maybe if I cleaned out the old nest debris, new birds would move in. Gently I took the house off the wall and opened up the hinged lid. I was so shocked to see no eggs, but 5 live, moving babies. Then I realized the chickadee in the tree was "yelling" at ME. I appologized to her, replaced the house and promptly went inside. Later in the day, once the two adults were gone away bug hunting, I lifted the lid and snapped a picture. WOW!

The frogs have been set free!

After several months, the children and I decided that the frogs would do better in the wild. So, they have been set free, back into the marsh were they were found as eggs.