Remember me?

Wow! It's been a while, eh? It just seems like life has been moving at lightning speed lately! We have been spending a lot of time in Atlanta over the summer while I work clinical hours at the free clinic in downtown (always interesting!) and teach a community clinical class for Emory. I LOVE the community clinical! It has been really nice to actually have time to talk to the students and work with them instead of running around crazy all day in the hospital! I haven't been dying ANY yarn so I really need to get on the ball with that. And, some of you may have noticed that we are completely sold out of yarn bowls. We need to get on that as well but we have a broken kiln that Wayne needs to fix. We just need to be home long enough for him to fix it in addition to the other usual house duties to keep up with around there.

We do have some new and exciting news. Quite unexpectedly, we bought an RV!!! Our neighbor across the street from us in Tucker sent us an email letting us know they were selling their RV and wanted to know if we are interested. We have been talking about this possibility for several years so we decided to just go for it because they gave us a great price and we know it has been amazingly well taken care of. Did you hear that SAFF - we have an RV!!! Party at our place in October! :)

It's not a huge one by any means. It is actually perfect for us. Easy to drive, not ginourmous but big enough to be comfortable for us and Petey and (of course) Nessie to travel around in. We figure it would pay for itself in about 3 vacations if you figure up airfare/gas/hotel/meals/rental car/etc. You can see some pictures at the link below. I tried to upload them for you here but my computer is not cooperating.

http://s1138.photobucket.com/albums/n524/lafter22/#!cpZZ1QQtppZZ12

Woo hoo! Vacation time -- here we come!!

Work Day!

We have some friends who are trying to sell a house for a friend of theirs that passed away some time ago. They asked for some help in getting the place "spruced up" a bit in exchange for donating some of the money from the sale towards the purchase of a much needed tractor for us at Feed Fannin. The house is really cute, is on a great piece of property and has beautiful landscaping and a creek. This place is gardening ready! We went out there for several hours and helped with cleaning, weeding and just general clean up. It's amazing how fast work gets done when you have a crew of people helping!

 Bill tending the fire.

 Wayne and our good friend Bert doing some yard work.

 Here's me doing a little weeding.

Easter

So, last Saturday my dad called me. This is how the conversation went:


Dad: Hey! Do you guys want to come over for Easter lunch?

Me: Sure! Uhhhh.......when is Easter?

Dad: Tomorrow!

Me: Oh. Oh! Sure!

Luckily, we didn't have any other plans so we were able to go! We had a great time and Nathan and Tiana were able to join us too. One of my dad's business partners showed up dressed as the Easter Bunny for all the kids!! The kids were SO EXCITED. This is my dad and my aunt with the Easter Bunny and Wayne with Miss Bella!

Our side of the family played a few hands of cards. I was SO CLOSE to winning it all! It came down to just two people - me and my dad's business partner (the Easter Bunny)! Unfortunately, I lost. But, at least I can say that I got beat by the Easter Bunny on Easter - haha!  :)

Stitches South

I know you have all been anxiously awaiting some pictures from Stitches South! We had an AMAZING time as always. It is always great to see good friends. Of course, the Scalini's dinner was totally awesome and I think we had a record crowd this year! We completely packed the banquet room and I think everyone had a really good time. Per usual, it seems I am always the one taking the pictures and never seem to end up in any of the pictures!

Here's our table. That's my son waving in the background there. Luckily, he and Tiana were able to make it this year!

Here is a shot of Nathan and Tiana

Here is the infamous Gryphon of Sanguine Grypon in her usual attire!

Wayne had a "kilt buddy" this year! This is Wayne and Hunter. It's funny because when Hunter first got there, he said he had tons of people coming up to him saying "You are wearing a kilt - do you know Wayne?" Hunter was thinking - I have got to meet this Wayne guy - he seems so famous, right? Well he did and I managed to get a shot of them together in their kilts. Aren't they looking "manly"? haha!

My dad came and was a big hit, as usual. We all had a great time. Same time, same place next year right folks?? Jen has effectively named this dinner "Scalinigate". Kind of catchy, don't you think?  :)

New kid on the block!

Remember poor Red,  our rooster that never really amounted to being much of a rooster? Red was our special needs chicken that just was never right. He had a good life with us until he ended up getting ill. As quirky as he was, we loved that rooster and he was very entertaining! Well, the girls have been without a rooster now for about 6 months and haven't seemed to mind not having a man around one bit!

The other day, Wayne went to the feed store and saw some roosters in there and felt sorry for them being all pent up in a cage. I can't say I blame him. So, he comes home with this handsome fellow!!

Meet Red Jr.!  :) We had a few fights going on when he first got here because the girls were really picking on him. If you know anything about chickens, you know that there really is a very strict "pecking order" and if anyone new is introduced they have to re-establish the order. Unfortunately, they do this by fighting each other and this is why you generally can't have more than one rooster at a time because the roosters will REALLY fight each other - usually until one of them kills the other one. This is no good. However, with roosters and hens it is not that serious, just more of an establishment routine.

We took all the necessary precautions (again, no hate mail about chicken fighting please) and eased the rooster into the group. We kept him in a comfortable size cage inside the pen until the girls got used to him and then we let him out with them the next day. There was a little bit of squabbling and Wayne and I were there to supervise, but they got things worked out rather quickly. Once Red Jr. realized "Hey wait a minute - I'm the rooster here!" all things fell into place. Now they are all one big happy family free ranging around the yard together!

He will look better in a few weeks once he has had good food and exercise and a happy life for a while, but isn't he pretty?? He is a Red Lace Wing Wyandotte. Our black and white chickens are White Lace Wing Wyandottes. I didn't know there was any such thing as a red lace wing but here he is! See how the feathers on his chest have that back edging around the red on the feathers? That's the "lace wing" pattern that gives them their name.

Welcome to the family Red! He is GREAT with the dog and the cats too so we really lucked out! I think he is going to be very happy here. I'm glad we can give him a great home!

Happy Anniversary!!

Happy anniversary to my sweet husband! Today marks the beginning of our 7th year married. So, 6 years under our belt so far! Honestly, this is one of the better decisions I have made in my life. Thank you sweetheart for being my best friend and always being here. I am enjoying the ride. I look forward to MANY more anniversaries with you!!  :)  I love you Wayne!!

 These pictures are from the day we got married:

These are from our wedding party:

These are from last summer!

Optimistic hunting

The other day I was walking around downstairs in our house and I happened to look out the window. I noticed what appeared to be a huge bird on top of our shed. At first, I thought it looked like a pretty chunky heron because of the shadows. But as I moved around a bit to get a better look, I could see it was one of our Canada Geese that frequent our pond. I have never seen them hanging out on top of our shed before so I thought that was pretty funny.

However, what made it even funnier was the fact that my little, tiny, 4 pound cat thought that she was going to stalk this goose on about a 90 degree angle roof and was going to "attack" him before he flew away. Of course, I knew that was never going to happen (Please don't send me hate mail about having an outdoor cat that is predatory on wildlife, it's really not necessary. She's a cat. Cats stalk things. She's also a pretty lazy cat that does not make much effort to kill anything. The chickens pretty much keep her in check.). So, I was amused with watching Missy plot her strategy.

Amazingly enough, she actually DID scale that roof with no trouble at all to get to the top! I was shocked! Of course, the goose flew off long before she actually got there and went to hang out in our pond where he knew cats would never tread. Once she figured out she could do it, she must have gone up and down that roof 10 times just to show off I guess. She seemed pretty darn pleased with herself! So, even though it wasn't a successful "hunt", it was certainly a successful day of personal accomplishments for her.

Our animals always seem to manage to keep us entertained!