Nothing like a bottle, a kitty,and watching Olivia

Lorelei came to visit today...she wanted to stay outside almost all day. The only thing that really tempts her voluntarily to come back inside is if there is a cat she wants to get...

So, we played outside here...her favorite thing is sticks, followed by rocks. Lorelei can also spend a fair amount of time opening and closing the gate. She will open it, close it, open it and go out it, turn around and close it and then open, and go back inside. Over and over.

We also took her to a little park near here...again her favorite thing: sticks of course. She did like the slide, but not the swings. There is a small church up there...the church and park share a parking lot. I actually don't know who officially owns the parking lot. The church has a ramp for wheel chairs that is not very steep and not very long. Lorelei discovered it and had a very good time going up and down it.

She did take a small nap in her car seat on the way home from the park....but I figured when they went home that she might fall back asleep. No such luck. She did decide to slow down and have a bottle...and that is when Sarah took this picture...she gave it the title I used.

However her mommy did tell me a couple interesting things. One is if Sarah is setting down and Lorelei is playing, Diesel comes and gets in her lap, here comes Lorelei and sits down on him. And makes him leave....she don't want to share her mommy, though she likes it if he comes to see her.

The other thing, her friend told her that if her little boy starts to get into something she will tell him , 'no, no' and he will say 'O, its Lorelei's'....he is two years old. And she is not the only kid he is around...he has just always been so good to her.

Pet the kitty!

Guess who is petting the kitty with their foot? Lorelei, of course. She was laying back in her mommy's lap, and of course, Diesel wanted up there also. Lorelei did not mind at all. She still will grab a kitty's ear sometimes or she wants to feel their eye. Bubbie will just set there most of the time with her poking at him. Puss Puss runs any time she is near...she always has so it isn't a thing of Lorelei having hurt her.

Cougar runs sometimes and sometimes not...and the biggest surprise of all is a lot of times Lorelei can walk all over Mama Cat and she will just let her. At least half the time...other times she will get up and leave. I doubt anyone can imagine the change in Mama Cat since she came to live with us...before the only person that could pet her was my older daughter...the rest of us she would try to bite or to scratch. Now she never meets a stranger.

I was going to post this last night, but for some reason you tube was really slow on this end last night. Tonight, I have been getting an error code when I try to publish some of the comments but reported the error and got them published. Only from one person...all the others I could publish.

Covington Methodist Church

Saturday, Covington, Indiana was as far north as we went.
I want to go back there and take more time...there were some old, beautiful homes. I would also like to photograph some of the business district...it is a pretty little town.

Men at work....

Yes, men at work, not the group, but actually men giving this barn a face lift. When they finish, it is going to look fantastic...but has it lost something in covering the wood? I understand why they do it...yet I hate seeing it done. I am just glad I was not required to do the roofing...it would not have gotten done.
Notice the angled cuts...whoever is doing them is doing an expert job! And the pieces are so wide they were not being done with a chop saw. But maybe they made a jig...I know in doing some things that have to be done over and over, my husband has made his own jig, or tool, to get the cuts and/or measurements the same.

Maybe in a week or two, I can go back up through there and take a photo of the finished barn. I plan to post another photo from this farm on Time Stand Still.

Wonder if they even saw each other???

Yesterday was one of those wonderful days...sunshine...blue skies...not too cold. And for being in the middle of the day, the lighting was not as bad as it normally is. So, we headed out for a drive...we chose to go north. I got a surprise when I downloaded the picture above...I had not noticed the plane at all...Roger first called it Almost a Collision...or something like that...then he said, being funny, 'wonder if they saw each other?'
This is the backwaters of the Wabash River...we saw quite a few coots..no really good shots though. This one was almost a good 'Bottoms Up' shot...you might have to click and enlarge to see it...
There are a couple buzzards on top of the barn...spreading their wings. I like the barn anyway.
This was the prize of the day..not so much the photograph but what it is a photograph of. It is an eagle...a juvenile from the white on his chest.

I would love to know how high he was...he was way, way up there and still looked so huge. To us, his wings look too big for his body. I told Roger that I don't know why, but when they are up so high, they look so much larger to me than the ones I have seen closer to the ground. I would love to know why that is.

I needed this...Laughing at Otto

Today has been one of those days...it really has been a good day when all is said and done. It was bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. I got my hair cut this morn...I would say first thing, but it was 10:30 so it was not the very first thing...but it was the first thing I left the house for. After that, we headed to Terre Haute and got a couple errands done...nothing urgent but just things I wanted to get done.

But the day did not have the greatest of starts...I had been up a little while and decided to get on line...checked my mail, and tried to publish a couple comments to this blog. I could not access my blog, I could not access any blog done with blogger. I was using Firefox so switched to Internet Explorer...no luck. I switched to the other computer, again trying both browsers....no luck there either.

By then it was time to head to get my hair cut...and soon as I got back we left. I was thinking it was something with Blogger since I had no trouble with any other sites. I figured by the time we got home, it would be working. WRONG!

I got to investigating a little farther...I could not use the google search engine...I could not access any site to do with blogger...but if I changed to another search engine I could at least get results, but if it was a site to do with blogger, I could not access it.

I tried turned off the computers and restarting...no luck, I unplugged and plugged everything back in...the first time I did this, I lost all Internet connection. So I unplugged everything again and actually just let it set a few minutes and plugged everything back in...SUCCESS at last. I have visited most my normal blogs, and I even used the google search engine with success, but just tried to use it again, and I got that famous message that the connection to the server was lost...so I am posting while the posting is good. But wait a minute, I tried it again, and it worked that time...I swear these computers have a mind of their own.

But you can imagine how I enjoyed this little video after the puzzle of trying to get things to running again.

Going back....

My brother Neal has wanted me to try to write this for a long time...it is hard to do and do it right but here goes. This is the house of our nearest neighbor when I grew up. It is as it was when I grew up....this is not a good picture of it. I don't have one...this is just a cropped portion of another one. It was the home of V and V....both their names did begin with V. What are the chances of that?

I don't quite know where to begin...maybe I will say that every now and then, mom and I would walk out there to visit. I know we sometimes stopped to visit in the summer, usually just for a few minutes then. I think we were more apt to go visit in the cooler months. Maybe because mom did not have quite the work to do in the winter.

Going there was like stepping back in time. You just cannot imagine...my words are inadequate. The first thing that always hit me was just how gray the atmosphere was...and I actually think a lot of things were gray. You walked into the what would normally be the living room, and there was the gray floor....I don't know if it was a gray linoleum or if it was actually gray floorboards. The room had little in it...I don't think it had a couch....but I am not positive. It seems there was something to sit on, just not a sofa as we think of them. What was in there was the horses bridle...I don't remember if the rest of the harness was there, but that always struck me odd for the bridle to be there.

We would go through another room, at one time I am sure it was meant for a dining room, but we just passed through it and I know on the one side of the room was a bed. Now, what is funny, we would close the door between that room and the living room...and we would pass through it into the kitchen...again the door closed behind us.

The kitchen is where they lived...they had an a-m radio and a single light bulb hanging down in the middle of the room. I know the table was set in front of the window that faced our house...and I know there was a cook stove in there. The wood burning kind. But I don't remember much else about it other than the walls were covered with newspapers and cardboard, and a calender of course. I would set listening to the talk...talk about crops, gardening, etc.

They did not have running water...they had a well outside where they got their water--the kind you lower a bucket down and bring it up one bucket at a time. She did have a wringer washer...considering everything, I think she must have been lucky to have it. And they had an outhouse...which some college kids stole one weekend. I am sure they probably did not even realize anyone actually lived in the house....my brothers had to go find it and retrieve it....and no, they were not involved in taking it.

Another thing, they didn't drive, didn't have a car. The post office and store were about a mile away. I honestly don't know if this part is true, or if it just seemed to me that Mr. V walked down to the store and post office every weekday...at the least every other day. But he would try to time it to catch rides from neighbors...going or coming. And though he did go most days, Mrs. V very seldom left the home. At the most they might come out to our house and visit. If they had to go to an actual town they would find someone to give them a ride. It goes without saying that they did not have a phone...if they needed to make a phone call, they came and used ours.

Neal and I were talking earlier, as long as we knew him he never worked a regular job. He was in the army at one time, but probably only for a short period...he did not retire from it. They had a small garden, and raised a patch of tobacco. His dad had a tractor and would do the initial plowing...you know where you plow deep and turn the ground over after it has gone through the winter. He had a horse to do the rest of the plowing with...

They were strange...even for down there at that time and place. Their doors were always locked...unless they were sitting on their front porch. They were locked if they were in the house...night and day. If they were out in the garden at the side of the house, the doors were locked. Mrs. V's dad had to stay with them for a while, and they would lock the doors on him and leave him locked in. My dad would go out to visit him and they would have to yell through the door. Then dad remember we had an old skeleton key and took it, and could unlock the door. I don't remember their reaction to that. Her dad was not strange...and neither was his dad....so don't know why they were so strange.

She would see some of us kids out, and hide behind the chimney or an outbuilding...and would peek around the corner at us. At other times, she would go on about her business, and would speak if we were close enough.

Everyone was always good to them...there was always someone to help him load his tobacco and take it to market...even though he always found an excuse not to help anyone. He would condemn television, but yet when they came to our house to visit, if it was on he could not take his eyes off it.

Even though we lived by them all those years, there were things about them that will always puzzle me.

I am leaving out somethings...maybe my brother will comment and tell about them...like Roxie their horse. Right now I am running out of steam and need to close and post this.

It needs geritol....

I think this barn could use a shot of iron or vitamins or something...and so could I.
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We had the toot toot this afternoon, and boy does she keep me busy. She is just so full of life...but I did succeed in getting her to take a nice nap.

Remember how I told how much she likes to be outside? I had her outside a time or two, and I put her in her stroller and went for a walk around the block. After all that, she went to sleep fairly easy. Slept about an hour and a half...much more than she slept when she was just 5 or 6 months old.

Well, she had been up long enough to get her diaper changed and fooled around a few minutes. She went and got her jacket for me...she wanted me to know that she wanted to go outside! It was warm enough till she didn't need to it. I took her outside, but all she wants to do is go up and down the steps...so I brought her back in.

After her mom came home, I found the You Tube video of Feist singing 1, 2, 3, 4...one of Lorelei's favorite song. She came and climbed up in my lap and was really trying to sing along. Such a sweet little voice.

And she loves seeing that video of herself with the shopping cart...she just looks at us and grins with the most mischievous look in her eyes....

She's got nerve

First of all, I did NOT take these pictures...they are of my daughter and her tandem partner/instructor. A few years ago, she and one of her friends decided they wanted to try skydiving. So they looked into it and decided to do a tandem jump--that is where you have a little bit of training and then are harnessed in with someone who is an experienced jumper.
She did enjoy it, but hasn't gone again. I think she was most amazed by the quietness...

Busy, busy, busy....

Sarah sent these to me the other morn...I think you might get the idea of how busy Lorelei can be.
But who can complain? She keeps herself occupied and happy.

Her mommy, her aunt and I went on a shopping expedition yesterday and she had a blast. She was saying 'hi' to everyone or else waving to them. And was totally fascinated by the other kids. We had her stroller, but she did not want to stay in it. She like to be down and walking around...

We stopped for pizza on the way home--that is one of her favorites. You would have thought she would be tired and fussy but she was totally entertained while there, as well as being entertaining.

Lending new meaning to the term red-hot

Roger just finished a new knife, which I shall feature on my other blog here shortly. Not the knife in his forge shown here....he was using it as a heating element to heat his quenchent.
When he uses his forge he has it in the open door of his shop...it really heats up the place....these pictures just do not capture the heat radiating from it. Though they are better if enlarged.
Here he is getting ready to submerge the knife blank to heat his quenchent.
All his friends bring him steel...he likes 1095 series leaf-spring steel to make them. He does the knife from start to finish.

He also made the gas forge shown here...I have another post about it but have to get the pictures uploaded for it again.

Evening glow....

I have been missing some great sunsets...every night I have looked to the west and there has been this fabulous golden glow. It has been indescribable, and will remain so even though I went to the strip pits again to try to capture it.
I saw a blue heron taking off as soon as I turned down the road to enter the area, no chance for a photo. But then I noticed a pheasant..no chance to get a close picture. Just seen his head. So I crawled along, and eventually saw two more that were together, these were too far away for my poor lens. I watched them a little while and continued on and saw the one above. This is not the greatest picture but it will do. By the time I headed home, I had seen either 7 or 9 pheasant. The reason I say 7 or 9 is that I think I saw the same two twice...all were male. I wonder where the females are hiding.
The evening glow had just barely started when I took the photo of the pheasant...I am not sure you can tell it in it but I think you can see its beginning in this photo. I thought about calling it The Long Shadow....
And two more of the sunset itself! Even though it didn't have quite the same color that I have been missing, it was gorgeous. I hope you enlarge them for full effect!

I wish everyone could have been there...the spring peepers were in full voice, red-winged blackbirds were every where...it was just so peaceful.

And I almost forgot to tell this...I was creeping along retracing my route....the one I had just went down and there was a fishing rod-n-reel in the road. How I had not run over it on the way down the road is more than I know because it was on that side! It was not near a strip pit...have no idea how it got there. It came home with me...it isn't a good one or anything. One of the eyes were bent....I bent it back in place. If there were a local bait shop I would leave it there, or else tell them if someone comes in looking for one to call me. We have lost stuff out like that, only it was a more cherished item and it is not a good feeling.

A little visitor....

We had a little visitor today....
and boy, does she like to be outside....
she still loves the kitties...
believe it or not she is looking back inside in this one watching one!

Can you guess what her favorite thing is? To go up and down the steps, of course. I have never seen a kid that didn't love going up and down steps. I also have some little rocks laying out back and she loves them also.

As you can see by these photos, it was a warm one today! I am really loving the sunshine!

Life at the strip pits

We had sunshine....ALL DAY LONG! I didn't quite know how to act...of all the days to have it, it was a good one. Sarah and Lorelei were planning to come up today, but due to unforeseen circumstances, they didn't come. However, one of the guys Roger used to work with came and spent a good part of the day here.
A while after his friend left, we decided to run out to the strip pits to see what we could see. On my Time Stand Still I have featured the prize capture, but I thought I would show these as well. Yes, if you click the photo above, I think you can tell that that is a cat! I thought it made a fairly good photo.
There were not too many birds, we seen more mallards than anything. The geese and the mallards seem to be pairing off to start their families.
We saw some other deer, but this was the only one that I captured with the camera.
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I just discovered something about ScribeFire...the Firefox add-on to manage blogs. The pictures that I upload with it cannot be enlarged. Another negative thing was that only one photo at a time could be uploaded. Though I would have lived with that if the photos had enlarged. Anyway, I probably won't be using it.

I think it would be fine if you didn't publish photos to enlarge...but even on my Time Stand Still blog, my photos can be enlarged. Except for these few I have published with it. and the more I think about it the more I am thinking I will go and redo the photos with the regular publisher.

Normal and photoshopped

These are from the foggy trip up north the other day. The top photo is
the true to life photo...I did staighten the image, but otherwise it
is as I took it. This was taken after the fog had really started
to lift...if it had been earlier when we first started, or even an
hour earlier, we would not even have known it was there.

This bottom one I did the auto levels on...I actually like it best as
photos go, but the other will always make the memory of the trip
more vivid. I hope it is a long time before we travel in fog as thick
as it was that day. In fact, if I never travel in it, I would not be
at all disappointed.

Panting: the new form of comic relief

I just have to share this...we came home and found this little video in our email. Have your sound on. The laugh is contagious. Lorelei's daddy can make her laugh at almost anything.

We had a little visitor today

Bright Eyes came up and spent the afternoon with us. She is just busy, busy, busy. Just a happy little girl......she played with her papaw. Chasing him through the house. She would not quite go through the door cause she knew he would be on the other side. But she would wait for him to jump out and say 'BOO' and would just giggle.

Sarah says her dad plays hide-n-seek with her, and he will hide and call 'Lorelei' real softly, and Lorelei will go 'da-da' real soft back to him. She still likes the eee-i-ee-i-O thing. Sarah said the other day she had gotten horse from doing it.

And guess what? When Sarah has her outside and takes her back in the house, she gets mad. Who would have imagined that. One thing she likes to do is to find Otto sitting outside and she just goes up and sits beside him. Just happy to be with him. She was doing that today with Mama Cat. Sometimes she gets up and leaves and other times Lorelei can step all over her and she just sits there.
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Have any of you ever lost a kid, or thought you did? When Sarah was about three years old, all of a sudden I/we couldn't find her. Even back then, I kept close tabs on them. I only let her and Rachel out in the backyard if I was going to be with them or in the kitchen where I could watch out the back door and window.

I don't remember the circumstances right now, just that Roger was home and I/we realized we couldn't find her. We called for her, and was in and out of all the rooms, went next door to Aunt Luddy's--no Sarah. I can still feel my heart up in my throat. Then we thought, do this methodically....go through each room close the door behind us after we are sure she isn't in there.

In one bedroom, the bed sat in front of a window. She was hiding behind the headboard, behind the curtain....and had not made a sound! I can't help but wonder how many times Lorelei is going to pull stunts like that.

I may sound like a negligent parent, when I tell this next, but really I am not. I cannot remember how old she was when this incident occurred...she might have been a year year and a half older. I am not sure. Again I realized she was just not here, and I was starting to go through the search. Even knowing how she did the other time, I was still on the verge of being frantic. I get a phone call...it is Aunt Luddy telling me she had a little girl over there. That little girl was Sarah, and Sarah told her she had told us she was coming over there. She knew us well enough to know that we wouldn't just let her wonder over there.

These days, I would be afraid to let a kid out of my sight for even a minute....even when Lorelei gets older than that.

The finished quilt...

Roger got busy this morn and made a take-down rack for me to use to hang a quilt from to take photos...now if I only had the lighting to do a good job. If it wasn't so windy, I would take it outside to take photos.
But these at least give you a glimpse of the quilt in all its glory.
This is something I just sort of made up as I went along...

There is a pattern called an Irish Chain and this has the feel of one, though it really isn't one. It is Sarah's...I want to take it to the laundry mat to wash the first time...I will use a Shout color catcher in case any of the fabric bleeds. Though now that it is done, I might be able to do it in my washer...I first thought it was too big.

Some quilters wash all their fabric first thing when they bring it home but I like working with new fabric. I guess the first time I have a quilt ruined I will do different. I did buy this one fabric several years ago...just a beautiful vivid blue...I had a feeling I should wash it before I used it. It bled so much, repeatedly that I never used it for anything.

I am trying to make up my mind to get out another quilt top and get the sandwich made and pin basted...I may wait a day or two. The one I have in mind is almost as big as this one I just finished. I guess I will just wait and see what the weekend brings.
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For a story that will give you a warm feeling all over, read this story. I belong to a quilt forum and the link was posted there...it is one of the best heart-warming stories I have read in a while.
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The day started with thunderstorms...I was up about daylight unplugging computers. Even though they are on a surge protector, I don't totally trust it. So if I am here, I unplug them. Later, it was warm...in the 60's today....it was over 70º yesterday! Things are trying to spring to life. I hung out a load of clothes, even though it was dark and cloudy one minute and sunny the next. Probably dark and cloudy more than sunny. I just love hanging out clothes. I don't know why. I like hanging them in an orderly fashion, shirts with shirts, jeans with jeans, towels with towels, etc. I even separate them as I get them out of the washer.

Sometimes I wish I had a wringer washer. When I was a kid, that is what we washed with. And laundry day was sort of an all day job....well, at least all morning. And we had to be there in the evening to bring them in off the line. I can't help but think how much water would be saved. I have heard the auto washers and dryers called time savers, but I am not so sure. I hate to think how much time I spend running up and down the basement stairs taking care of them.

St. Jo's College

On our road trip to see the Sandhill cranes, we were approaching the city of Rensselaer, Indiana. I saw the spires, or bell towers or whatever they are supposed to be called before I saw anything else. I told Roger he had to stop...when we got there we saw that it was a school of some kind. So, we took a left turn on to the campus, I stopped and got the first two pictures.
We continued on around and found out that it was St. Joseph's College....I had not heard of it before, but I am not likely to forget it now. It is a small college in (around 1000 students) in a small town of 5,000-6000. It is a private, Catholic liberal arts college that was founded in 1889.
This is the front of the church...I have fiddled with it in photoshop trying to get the best photo I could. It was taken in the middle of the day with the sun overhead...that is my excuse. If we were not running to late, due to the fog, I would have stopped on the way home for better photos.

Good visibility

We got up sort of early for us and was gone from here before 8:30...the rest of the week has rain forecast for almost every day. Or it did have...I haven't checked today. We were headed north to Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area to see the Sandhill cranes again and yesterday seemed the best day to make the attempt.

I am telling you now, if rain was not in the forecast so much for the coming week, there is no way I would have traveled yesterday. We were in fog so thick most of the way there...so thick you couldn't see what was in the road right beside you. Go here, and look what is right beside the road...notice the 3rd photo down especially. Now we were in the lane this photo was taken from so we were across the median, etc....but there are others almost as close on our side of the road and even though I was looking for the wind turbines, I never spotted a single one on the way north. That gives you a clue to how thick the fog was.

When we got so far north we were going to have to get off the 4 lane road, we decided to find a place to sit and have coffee and wait for the fog to lift. We did take our chances though and traveled a few mile on a two lane road to Watseka, Illinois....we went to this little mom and pop restaurant and ordered coffee.
The first thing the waitress told us there had been a 10 car pile up just right there close to Watseka....that all the ambulances had been used. We sat there at least an hour, and finally thought the fog was lifting, but as we left there I thought I saw a junk shop so stopped there for a few minutes before heading out. There we heard 12 cars, and this morn I did find a link and it said 12 cars.... These top two scenes were after we left there...
And these are the Sandhill cranes we went to see. I didn't get many good pictures...of course with all the waiting it was the middle of the day when there and though my focusing skills leave a lot to be desired, the lighting was also bad.

The quilt tester

I have finally finished the quilt...but no pictures yet. Hopefully before the week is out I will have opportunity to take some. I have not worked on it steady, but just when I had TV to watch.
I am sure this quilt is going to be well loved...in fact, it already is. The three youngsters of the cats have all laid in it, on it, under it every opportunity they could get. But the Puss Puss shown here has been the one that seemed to love it most. She has really given it the official test the past couple of days.

Bubbie usually wanted in it if he thought he could get some kind of game out of it...and would crawl under the folds. He crawls under anything he can...put a newspaper on the floor and he will try to crawl under it. If just his head is under, he thinks his whole body is hidden.

Now Cougar is a bit different...he likes to lay on anything he can that I have recently handled. If I lay a jacket down, and forget it, I will look around in a bit and he is laying on it. He has gotten in my lap while I was stitching the binding down and sat on it till he had to move, and he did this while I was quilting it. I would quilt, have to stop and move him to reposition the quilt, and he would crawl right back on it. You don't know what you are missing if you don't have cats!

Meet Sheba

Please click to enlarge to see how pretty she really was!

Roger and I was at the wedding of his cousin and she told us about the puppies that were just born and that they were collie and samoyed. At that time I had not heard of samoyeds. But I could not remember a time that I had not loved collies.

Attending his cousin's wedding was one of the first things we did together, and though we had not discussed marriage, we said something about liking them. Or maybe it was at our wedding, we mentioned them again...I don't know. Keep in mind we only dated a month and got married....anyway, we had not been married too long when here came his cousin bringing us this little bundle of love and energy.

I don't know where I came up with the name of Sheba, but that is what I named her. And I think by the time we got her, I had been home to Tennessee and brought my dachshund home. They were a pair...Snoopy the dachshund liked to play ball and Sheba like to play with an old sock with a not tied in it. She would have liked for Snoopy to play, but Snoopy preferred to play with us. But every now and then when Snoopy walked by Sheba, Sheba would reach out and bite her tail just to get a reaction out of her.

Roger and I both worked the evening shift, so they were alone for several hours, though my mother-in-law would come and let them outside a time or two before we got home for them to go to the bathroom. But still, I cannot remember all that Sheba chewed up with her sharp, puppy teeth. For one thing she chewed our checkbook to pieces, and another thing was a New Testament Roger's aunt had given him when he joined the marines.
The destructive phase of her puppyhood did not last long and she grew into a wonderful dog. She liked all women, and though she didn't hate men, she very seldom met any that she liked immediately. She knew family, though it might take her a day to accept them as family if she had not met them when young, but once she knew, she didn't forget them the next time she saw them. If it was any of Roger's male friends from work, she usually sat between us and them.

From the first minute she met our preacher, she liked him. And this one guy down home....that had been buddies with my brothers and been like family. She loved him the minute she met him.

Roger could pretend to attack me, and she would go up and would put her mouth around his leg
but not bite him....if he had really been hurting me she would have defended me I am sure.
We had had her about two years when we moved to Tennessee....where these photos were taken. All I had to do to was say 'here kitty, kitty' or 'where's the cat?' I do not know why, but she hated cats. Or maybe she didn't hate them, but just wanted to chase them. So, when I wanted a nice picture of her, the word to say was not 'cheese' but 'kitty.'

When we moved back to Indiana, it was sort of suddenly...my father-in-law's cancer had returned. We moved in with them for a month or so...and we left Sheba with my mom. Though we got to see her a more times, she was always thrilled to see us. A faithful companion always.

Turkey Run views

I thought I would post a couple or three views from Turkey Run....when the kids were young, we used to visit this park fairly regularly.
At that time, we would wade and play and fish in the creek. People swam...nothing was said about it.
Now there are signs prohibiting wading and swimming. I suppose we could still fish, but it would not be as much fun if we couldn't wade.

Gray, a beautiful color

I like the color gray, but had never really thought of it as beautiful. However, the more I watch the birds...the more I classify as beautiful.
These were taken at Turkey Run State Park...
I have these kinds of birds at home, but have yet to get shots even as good as these. And these were taken through dirty windows.
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Lorelei and her mommy came up today....I taught her a new habit. I have a basket that has handholds--not a handle. I set her in it and took her for rides. She liked it. I have a feeling I might regret doing it if I don't find something else to distract her. She went to it two or three times after I did it the first time and got in it...

So, I had her in tears right before she went home....
I was giving her one last diaper change before she left, and she started her version of the E-I-E-I-O from Old McDonald Had a Farm...it is something we all sing back and forth to each other. Just the ee-i-ee-i-o part...so when she started she looked to me to take my turn at it. So, I did...only I sung the ee-i-ee-i part in a normal or slightly high voice...then I would lower the tone of my voice and say (almost shout) it while getting her belly. She laughed so hard and had me do it over and over...she honestly had tears rolling down the side of her face from laughing so hard.

I have never seen a child that young have tears of laughter, and I know I say this all the time but I have never seen a kid of any age just look for something to laugh at as much as she does. She has been that way from so young.