A fresh new doo!

As of this afternoon Chey has a fresh new hair cut. Poor little bug has had to deal with over a years worth of issues with her hair due to the Epilepsy medications. Great news today though, there are no more thin patches of hair and it is all very good and healthy! YAY!! Chey is very happy with her new doo and even happier that the new growth looks to be less curly this time around. Back to her good wave look that she had before all of the medication took its toll. So new hair today, mean Mommy time tomorrow with some immunizations and then off to the High school for registration on Thursday. Doing a pretty good job of keeping everyone busy this week, and hopefully going to end up having a great last week of summer vacation.

What now?

Another picture from last week with the girls. This morning all of the girls are still sleeping due to waking up in the wee hours of the morning to tell their Daddy good bye. We all helped him get his stuff out to his truck and then lots of kisses and huge hugs were given. Steph here is so much her Mom that sometimes it is scary for me. She helped me get her sisters back in the house and get them calmed down and back off to sleep, and then I heard her crying in her room. Ah, so much like her Mommy wait till no one else is around to cry a few tears over missing someone. Good news is it isn't that long of time that he is going to be gone, and not going to a war zone. It is going to be our first longer time TDY in a few years though. We have been really pretty lucky over the years of not having them be that long.

Today we will worry about him being safe driving the 10 hours to where he is heading. I'm sure in the coming days as he get going with his job we will be missing some nightly phone calls, but in time I'm sure things will get into a normal routine both here and there.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good weekend, and that this week gets off to a good start.

Need some rain?

We have more than enough rain to share right now. I think we might actually be going for breaking our record high we hit last year. Yesterday in just a few minutes of rain coming down the whole street was flooded and up over the curb for the water level. We have pools of water everywhere!


The first two pictures are out the front door yesterday. Lots of rain and at one point in time we couldn't see across the street it was coming down so hard. We stayed in the front patio till the lightning started striking right across the street from us.



The last two picture are out in the backyard this morning. Our ravine area has become a rushing rapids as of this mornings rain here. Even have the waterfall up by the stairs for getting to the school. Our green is getting even greener with every day that passes here. I just hope that we get a couple of days here soon with no monsoon rains so that the flooding doesn't get to out of control.


I thought about making a trip out to Garden Canyon to see how high the creek is now, but since for the first time ever I'm seeing tons of water in the back ravine, I'm pretty sure that the washes on the drive out to the canyon would be flooded and probably blocked off to keep people from trying to drive through. I really don't want to be one of those stupid motorist that has to be rescued from a wash, so I will just stay home and listen to the rushing water in the back yard.
Everyone have a good safe weekend!

Friday...Which means time for felines!

If you sit at my computer desk you need to be aware of something lurking in the shadows. It's Eclipse, and if she is having a great timing day she will put her eyes up real close to look up at you when you just have forgotten that she is under there. Since I tend to set a drink there most of the time, that is how she gets me the best. I forget she is curled up down there, and then grab my cup of coffee, or tea and much to my surprise there are the eyes looking out at me.




Angel wasn't as interested in posing for anything this week. She was way to busy chasing down that fly that got in the house, and she just couldn't believe that Mom had actually killed it. So she was looking for it, and looking, and looking.


Okay it is Feline Friday over at Steve's again. So head on over and check out all of this weeks felines.

Steves

Everyone have a good weekend!

New pictures of girls

Just thought I would add some new pictures of the girls that I did yesterday. Since school registration is this week, I guess these will be the yearly heading back to school pictures that have been getting added to baby books since they started school.

Just something small

Rain off and on yesterday so no chance for an outing with the camera. So just going to post a picture from earlier in the week out at Garden Canyon.
We have school registration starting this week for the girls and the summer for them is quickly running out of time. In just a couple of weeks we will be back to the daily running that the school year brings.
There isn't to much of anything else for this morning, other than I hope everyone is having a great weekend with the people that you care about the most.

Watching the storm roll in

Monsoon brought us one heck of a storm last night. High gusting winds, a lightning show that was great to watch after you made sure that everything electronic was turned off and you were in a safe place, and thunder that rumbled the very walls of the house.

It was the as the storm was rolling in that had me a little worried, and fascinated. This morning in the paper they are reporting that it rolled in from the east, but after being outside at the time it came rolling in, I would say this thing came at us from all sides. The scariest part of it rolled in from the east. You could see the several different levels of clouds as it came rolling in and there was a counter clockwise rotation going on with the clouds as they came in last night.

The first two pictures were shot looking towards the east of us, and were shot about 5 minutes apart. The second two are shot facing the west and shot about the same 5 minutes apart. It was amazing just how fast this storm came rolling in. Even better was the fact that in about 20 minutes it dropped our temperature 20-22 degrees.

Having grown up in Nebraska, seeing a storm like what last night brought to us I would have expected tornado warnings. Arizona doesn't really get tornadoes though, in the three years that we have lived here there has been only one that touched down. The really bad thing is though that one never was even warned about, because...well just because it never was. They are such a rare thing to have happen here that they don't do warnings for them. Which is why when the sky started looking like it did last night, we stepped close to the outside to keep an eye on the sky. This storm cause several highways to be shut down here last night and caused a couple of deaths. It was a very impressive storm, but I think we can pass on another one like for a little while.

Beautiful Eclipse

Eclipse and I had a great photo shot this week. First she was willing to come out of her hiding spot, then she was willing to be pet and brushed, which always lead to her purr starting and then it is good to go for grabbing the camera because she isn't going to leave the one who is paying so much attention to her. Add in the fact that I opened the back patio door so we could sit and watch the birds...well she was in kitty heaven right here on earth!






I was a little worried while doing the pictures about stability of my hold on the camera. She had me sitting at odd angles to get the pictures of her, after all she cant make it that easy on me, that just isn't a cats way at all. Chose my marco setting on the camera and just hoped for the best with the pictures. I was very happy to see that not to many came out washed out due to all the bright light flooding in the back screen door. Only had a couple, but even those I liked due to her black and white coloring. On my side bar you can seen on that was flooded with bright light and washed her out just a bit, but I like the effect on her.




It is Feline Friday time again, and this in my first one from over here at what I'm pretty sure is my new home. Since it is kind of early for Steve to have posted Feline Friday yet, I'm just going to post a direct link over to his place today. So don't forget to drop in over there and take a look at not only all the felines but the stuff that he posts daily. Everyone have a great weekend!

Steves

Time with the girls

Usually don't do to much editing of pictures that I post on my blogs, but for these I did some soft edges. I ended up having several of Paige that I just love. She looks the most comfortable and at ease in them. Probably because when it comes to nature, she loves being out in it. I cant believe I'm going to say this after how horrible the fighting was with them yesterday, but I'm hoping to get another bit of time in out at the canyon with them before they all head back to school.

Good day for pictures

The girls and I made another trip out to Garden Canyon today. Still not a drop of water in the creek, but we saw more life around it which mean here shortly the water will be making its way down the Huachuca mountain side and filling it again. Tons of spiders, lizards of several different types, and birds. In the last three years of making trips out to the canyon I have seen that when the creatures start drawing near in number the water is soon to follow. But another day of being able to walk and explore the dry creek bed was good.

The funniest thing to see is a tiny lizard scaring all of us as if finally runs. I'm glad that I had the telephoto lens with me plus the zoom on the camera, because there was no way this little guy was going to let me get closer to him. I'm also being very kind and not posting the pictures where you would have to play "Can you spot the lizard?" Because it was difficult enough for me to find the little guy in all of the camouflage he had going on today.

I've got more picture to share, mostly of the girls who really tried to get me to leave them out in the canyon this morning. No, I didn't leave them...but the thought sure crossed my mind a couple of times while I was breaking up fight after fight between them. I think I'm getting my first signs that it is a good thing that school registration is next week and that they head back to school on the 8th of August.

Okay, everyone have a good end to your Wednesday.

Monday Morning & Back to working on this

Trinity and I are back to work on things here this morning. Okay she is working on chewing her tire to tiny pieces for me and leaving them everywhere in the house, and I am working on putting this blog together in a way that I might like it. Bad thing is that Trinity's work is going to leave a different kind of work for me to get done. It is called cleaning!

I love her look of "WHAT?" in this picture. I'm kind of feeling that same way with trying to get something added on to this blog here this morning. Anyway, I hope that everyone has a great start to their week.

Still playing with picture here tonight, and since sunset was a good one what better to play around with. Have had Picasa software on my computer for a good while now and never opened it to play with it till this morning. Amazing what I find so much fun to play with really. I'm just a simple person I guess. I promise I will stop playing so much once I get it all figured out.

Outting at Garden Canyon

I'm still working on my photo's thing here, which is fine since I have pictures from yesterday to work with that no one has seen yet. We made it out to Garden Canyon finally and were able to walk a couple of trails out there till we heard a huge noise in the brush that we could see just what had made so much noise. Without Todd around, I chose to not stick around out there because I know at the base of the mountain it could be just about anything for wildlife.

The wild fire area from a couple of weeks ago doesn't look to horrible. We were all glad that it didn't burn up to much of the area. The creek is bone dry and we were able to walk along that for must of our time out there. With the monsoon getting started here I'm hoping to get back out there in just a couple more weeks and see if it is filled with water.

Since we weren't finding a lot of wildlife, the girls were more than willing to do some showing off and posing for some pictures out there. It was a good couple of hours out in the fresh air and the cooler Arizona temperatures that have set in because of monsoon being upon us. I'm hoping that later this week after my Nennie gets back home finally that we can all head out there again and see if we can find anything interesting.

Overall I like this

Overall I think I'm liking this layout better than what I have been using. Heaven knows that I'm liking the fact that it is causing me much less stress than the other one. My only issues I'm still having is with pictures. I would like to figure out just how to get the pictures a little larger. I have been trying all night to figure that out, but have yet to get it just right. So I will just keep trying and either I will get it, or I will find the right that will help me.

I will say this though, I am loving the auto saving of drafts right now. Since my biggest issue I'm having, and what has sent me looking for something else is getting through a whole typing of a post just to lose it when I click on save. When it takes me 3-5 times to get a post saved, I think that is just past being a bit much really.

I'm also liking the fact that just because I add pictures doesn't mess up my font size. I know that is a simple silly thing, but dealing with some insane quirks will push a person over the edge every now and then. So now will come the real test, sending the new blog address out to a couple of people to see what they think about the new layout. I can continue to work on my picture issue, and hopefully come up with a solution to that.

First Blogger Post

Like I don't have enough blogs already, I go and start another one. Actually my thoughts are leaning towards maybe getting rid of one that has been giving me some issues. So before getting rid of it I need to see if I can work any other one's with a certain amount of ease and not end up frustrated. I think I may have found it here. So far I'm liking the layout and the photo uploading. Look out other blog you may have just meet your new replacement!