Random Sampler

These are pictures of random activities that have taken place in the last month or two. I've been slacking in the Blogging department so I thought I would throw a few pix together so I would be able to remember the enjoyment of them.

Remember how the month of May was so extremely HOT?

We pulled out our expensive pool, filled it with water and the kids

started their summer fun.

This is Katelyn with strawberry juice all over her mouth.

How does a girl eat strawberries daintily when she is missing her two front teeth?

Cameron....the epitome of BOY. Si, mi mama es . . . trying on hats.

No - she didn't buy either one of these. Hannah went to one our Young Women activities and became certifies in CPR.

Here she is working on Baby Jane Doe.

And here's Baby Jane Doe....alive and well.

This is one of our favorite restaurants; we took Hannah and our neighbor, Andrew

with us this night.

Here they are trying to eat their rice with chop sticks.

It was too funny NOT to take a picture of.

When you think of Mike and his truck, you think of this little green Ranger.

But he cleaned it out and traded it in for

this band new Toyota Tundra.

It's been his dream truck for a couple of years now. Dreams really do come true.

Our Backyard Wild Kingdom

Not long after we moved into the home we're in now we discovered we had moved

right in the middle of our own WILD KINGDOM.

We repeatedly heard from various neighbors that there were mountain lions that

roamed the neighborhoods around us.

We didn't believe them.....until we woke up one morning and saw THIS in

our back yard!!

Alright, that's really an African lion but we did see this bobcat lounging in

our backyard when we came home from church one afternoon.

He was old, hard of hearing, and apparently lost his ability to hunt

sufficiently. He had striking blue eyes but his face was frightening; so

we named him Lucifer.

He got up and slunk away when he noticed us.

If you click on these pix and enlarge them, you will see a beautiful red tailed hawk

perched on the bird feeder. We had a couple of baby hawks born in the trees just

below us and we listened to them squawk for weeks after mom and dad left them to

hunt for themselves. They have learned that bird hunting is very good in our back

yard when the quail, dove and blue jay are feeding.

Here they are when they were younger - one perched at the top of the tree

and one perched on a limb lower down in another tree to the right of his sibling.

They sat there for hours waiting for mom or dad to come back.

One afternoon Mike was in the backyard and walked in to tell me he

thought there was an alligator on our hillside. When he walked down

to get a better look, he discovered that it was an iguana; but it had died.

He felt very badly thinking that he may have contributed to it's death by

poisoning our "friendly neighborhood rats" (I will not include a picture

of the rats; they are too hideous).

After a proper funeral service he very gently picked it up..... And heaved it further down the hillside.

May he rest in peace and decompose quickly so the smell will cease.

We do love our backyard wild kingdom.

We have had roadrunners, woodpeckers, hummingbirds,

ground squirrels (blast them!),

cottontails (those waskeley wabbits that are so destructive),

coyotes, cooper hawks, kite hawks,

our red tail hawks, the bobcats and an occasional

sighting of racoons.

It's exciting to walk into the kitchen and anticipate what we might see today, tonight or tomorrow. WE LOVE IT HERE.