Shadow Cats

On any given sunny day, you will find the cats behind the curtain in the master bathroom basking in the sun. Normally they just lay there (one at a time of course - Cleo doesn't like her space invaded!). On this particular day, I was lucky enough to have my camera close by to catch the shadow puppet play the cats were acting out!

Cleo is blissfully unaware of the danger lurking in every corner as she basks in the sun.

Suddenly out of nowhere, Gabby prepares a sneak-attack that sends Cleo scrambling for safer territory.

Gabby is overwhelmed by the beauty of the setting sun and takes a minute to soak it all in.

After staring at the sun for a little too long, Gabby carefully feels her way out of the mysterious secret kitty hiding place.

Oh, hey you guys, I was just...cleaning behind the curtains...

Ida

I have had Ida since I was in probably 4th or 5th grade. "She" was a science fair project although I can't even remember what the project was. She survived it though whatever it was.

Meet Ida:

Yep, Ida is a plant. I am pretty sure she is Swedish Ivy but I might be mistaken as I have never seen another one in a store. Ida is definitely one of the most resilient plants I have ever owned - she has managed to survive with less than perfect light conditions, lazy watering, and a year in a sweltering germ-infested 3rd grade classroom. A pretty tough cookie if you do ask me!

So, the reason I am writing about Ida is because for only the 2nd time since I have owned her (that I know of!) she has bloomed! The first time it happened was not long after I had been married and had her in my classroom. The second time was just last week. I have never seen flowers like this - they are very dainty white flowers with small purple dots on them. Very, very pretty.



I must be doing something right because she must be happy. Hopefully she will be with me for many years to come (already made it through 17!)

Getting Bigger!

I am talking about the chickens' eggs, not my waistline if you were wondering! Up until now our eggs have just been 'medium' sized. Last night, we got a whopper!


In case you are wondering, that is an 'antique' Jiffy Way egg scale. Very accurate too - we have tried many store bought eggs on it and they always register with their boxed promise of 'large' or 'extra-large', etc. My father gave that to me after knowing I was always fascinated with it and was searching for one of my own. These babies go for about $40-50 for the old ones. Not even sure if you can buy new ones although I am sure you can some where!

Hanging in There

I know I know I KNOW! I have been so lame lately - not been a good friend at all with writing. Every afternoon I have the best intentions of sitting down and writing - I swear I even have ideas. But then I get home, change into some less binding clothes (all clothes are becoming binding nowadays!) and boy....that bed looks so comfortable....and I am so sleepy....just for a few minutes....and BAM - it's 6:00 and time to make dinner! So goes just about every one of my afternoons as of late.

I am finally better after last week - I was pretty sure I was going to die! As I said before, I started off the week with a super bad cold and wasn't sleeping very well because of it. Last Monday, after waking up several times to blow my nose, I was awakened by a searing pain in my back. Not to be gross but it hurt so bad I got physically sick. I managed to tough it out until morning when I could call my dr. and they had me come in and found out I had a kidney stone! Yikes! I got sent up to the hospital to get an ultrasound done on my kidneys and bladder (they didn't find anything unusual so I guess it was a small 'un). The only good thing I got out of it was the u/s tech let me see the baby and even let me hear the heartbeat - the first time! It was so neat but I was kind of sad Logan wasn't there to see it (he went to work before I went to the dr. and neither one of us thought I would have to go to the hospital!).

So that was my wild ride last week. I felt better by the weekend and ended up going to Rogersville for the weekend to Heritage Days - a neat but VERY crowded festival celebrating Rogersville's past complete with food, crafts, and Civil War reenactments. I hadn't been in awhile so thought I would go before I had a little one to tote around.

Not much other new news - the chickens are still laying their 1-2 eggs a day. Who would have thought we would get so excited about eggs! Unfortunately eating eggs isn't on the top of my list in the mornings - the smell of cooking eggs makes me queasy - not the taste, just the smell...Hopefully I am on the upswing with all of the yucky feelings and tiredness - can you believe that next Friday I will be 3 months preggo already? 1st trimester is almost mastered! Woo! Bare with me until my energy returns and I will get back into the swing of things - and hopefully I will have a cute baby belly (not just chubby belly) to show off! Have a good Friday and weekend!!

Earning Their Keep

I meant to blog all weekend. I had really good intentions. Logan was gone to a horse training clinic in North Carolina and I had a huge list of things I wanted to get done - clean the house, rent some chick-flick movies, make pepper jelly, get some Christmas presents knitted...Unfortunately I learned a hard lesson this weekend - being pregnant and sick are not good combinations - especially on the weekend when you can't call your doctor to get medicine recommendations!

I developed a very nasty head cold over the weekend which cut many of my plans short. I cleaned on Saturday and that was about the extent of my productivity - the rest was spent sleeping and blowing my nose - not fun. I even did something I never do today - take a half a day off! Gasp!! I am starting to feel slightly better though and hope I have dealt with the worst of it!

Logan came home today and made a wonderful discovery since I haven't gotten down to the chicken coop since Sunday morning -


One of our girls laid her first eggs! Now, of course there is NO telling which one it is - we figure it is probably our 'little red hen' but unless we see one setting, it's hard to tell with all of those girls running around down there! Hopefully the others will follow in her footsteps and we'll have an egg business up and running!!

Hopefully I will be back in the blogging swing of things VERY shortly - I have several neat things I am eager to share as well as some cute knitting projects I have wrapped up! I am venturing into mittens as we speak - yikes! As for now, I think it's time to go crawl into bed (so much for the papers I brought home to grade on my 'half a day off'). HA!