Happy Easter 2010

This weekend Terry's Dad and his wife, Ginny rolled into town from North Carolina. Ginny drove the whole way 2065 miles over about 4 days.  Pretty awesome, huh? They arrived at our house early afternoon on Saturday.

We were honored that they joined us in going to church on Easter morning. And since they were staying at our house, where the Easter Bunny might not find them, I decided to make up an Easter basket for them. It was fun shopping for a few treats that they could enjoy and take along on their trip home (if the candy lasts that long).  We discovered that Terry's dad has quite a sweet tooth, which is not so great when you're diabetic. I bought low carb chocolate especially for him. (Trader Joe's is a great place to get that if you're wondering).  Plus a few regular chocolates and some Jelly Bellies for Ginny.  Turns out Dad likes Jelly Bellies too, even though he's not supposed to have them. 

We enjoyed a great turkey dinner on the back patio in the afternoon. The weather was perfect! We had slow roasted turkey, low carb stuffing, green beans and salad. We tried to keep it manageable since we're all either watching carbs or calories to some degree or another.

Then after dinner we went for a walk with Grandpa and Ginny for a few miles or so (down to Baskin Robbins for dessert, because Cold Stone was closed).

On the way home when we were just a block or so from our house, we noticed a creature on the roof of one of the houses with a little annoying mocking bird squawking at it.  At first we thought it was a big cat sitting on the roof, then we realized it was a big OWL. It just sat there on the peak of the roof right at the edge and only a few feet from the little bird. Every once in a while the owl would turn his head and hoot.  I'm sure that he must have been perched near a nest, otherwise the mockingbird wouldn't have been so aggressive.

We stood there for several minutes watching it, then all of a sudden the owl took off and flew right toward us. Wow! His wingspan was probably close to 4 feet across. This photo is a little blurry because I had to zoom in on it, but you can clearly see the owl's features. I'm not sure I've ever seen an owl in the "wild" that close up.

And I'll leave you with this sneak peek at one of our Spring flower arrangements. I'll be doing a post about it because I think the "vase" is unique and actually kind of a fun idea, especially to use for an event. I'll tell you more about it later...

Hope you all had a Happy Easter!

I promised I'd show you the fabric that I bought for my first little fabric birds and here it is. The darker fabric is a rich navy. I'll use the two navy fabrics for one bird and the reds for another bird, then see where we'll go from there.

I know the colors aren't as bright and cheery as the ones that I showed, but they'll go well with my decor in the living room. If I really like them, I'll make more colors for the different seasons.

Let me know what you think.

The Birdman of Arizona

So I promised you another bird story about Terry and here it is. You might remember the tale of the baby Quail from a few months ago. I don't think this one tops it, but it follows in a similar tradition with Terry's ongoing relationship with the wildlife in our yard.

Yesterday he was outside doing yard work on one of the last bearable days before summer officially hits. He was trimming our Mexican Blue Palm tree in the backyard, which is one of the few that are left in the yard. because he kinda likes the bluish color of the palm fronds (he's not normally a fan of palm trees).

Anyway, I'm sitting in the office and all of a sudden, I hear Terry calling me from the back door to COME QUICKLY with an urgency in his voice. So, of course, I follow him outside and see him standing next to the palm tree looking down at the branches on the ground. He's got a guilty, confused, perplexed look on his face, looks and me and says, "I saw a pigeon sitting on the wall next to the tree, so I made sure to check for bird's nests before I started.

I looked down on the ground to see a palm branch with a nest and two cute little shocked baby birds resting right in the middle of it. Fortunately, when Terry wielded his chainsaw on this particular branch it floated softly to the ground instead of twisting in the breeze and turning upside down. God had His hand on these two little vulnerable creatures.

So before we did anything else I ran in the house to get my camera. This was definitely blogworthy!

Now that I was prepared, we needed to try to figure out what to do with them...after some discussion about the fact that they're pigeons after all (Terry's comment) and doubt that they'll make it anyway, we determined that he would move the whole branch over to a shady spot in the yard in hopes that the mother would come back and take care of them.

As you can see, they do have some feathers, so there's hope that they'll be able to fly soon. Here's a photo of them in the corner of the yard and the mother (we assume) sitting up on the block wall trying to figure out what in the world happened and why her babies are on the GROUND all the way on the other side of the yard from where she left them!

This next photo is Terry showing his wild man murderous form with the chainsaw. Actually he's just getting tired of me taking pictures of the guilty party. He can get testy with the paparazzi at times.

Soon afterward we had to leave for an evening out, so we just hoped that the babies would be o.k. for the night. While we were out, we were sharing the story with a few friends and came up with the idea of putting the branch back up in the tree if we could get it to fit without dropping the nest.

Not sure if it would work, but...this morning when Terry got up, he checked on the birds and they were still there and alive. We had no idea if the mother had been with them, so not sure if they had eaten or what condition they were in.

Terry decided it was worth a shot to try to move the whole branch again. Not sure how he managed, but he was able to gently lift up the branch and set it back in the tree among the other palm fronds. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if the mother would come back and claim them again. We checked periodically throughout the morning, but didn't see any signs of mom.

Then after lunch I wandered out back to see how they were doing and lo and behold, mom was sitting in the nest with her two little ones!!! Yea! We were happy and relieved.

In this last pic you can see one of the babies sitting contentedly by her mom. And this brings us thru another chapter and happy ending in The Tale of Terry and the Birds. I wonder how many chapters we'll be adding to this tale.

Do you think the fact that he fills and maintains 3 hummingbird feeders and 1 birdseed feeder raises his chances of another chapter?

I'm not a betting person, so all bets are off...I guess you'll just have to wait and see.

Birds...

Check out these adorable fabric birds that my dear friend, Linda discovered on The Yvestown Blog on her April 27th post. She's always on the lookout for great ideas to pass along, which is such a huge help! The post even has a link to the pattern, which I just printed out and it looks SUPER SIMPLE.

Linda suggested that I make some for my branch in the living room, which I agree is an awesome idea! I've had trouble coming up with something for summer and this just might be the answer. I think I even have time to do some sewing.

Now I just need to find some appropriate fabric.

Thanks, Linda!

Oh and speaking of birds, remind me to tell you Terry's latest bird story...kinda sad, but hopefully not tragic. Let's just say that no one's going to be calling him Dr. Doolittle anytime soon. I have pictures too. Stay tuned...

How to tell if you're mom's favorite.

Hilarious...and kinda sad.

I hope I don't become a "Bird Lady".

Since we discovered the 2 little baby hummingbirds on the patio, we bought 3 new birdfeeders recently. Two new hummingbird feeders and one "regular" bird feeder. It's been fun taking pictures of them. I actually have my long lens set up in the family room focused on one of the new feeders just outside the window.

Also discovered that the lady who is renting us our Hummingbird Suite this fall really LOVES hummingbirds. The rental is a cute little place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Donna called this week to finalize the reservations and asked if we see many H-birds out here. When I told her about the nest with babies on the fan, she was so excited. She says they only get one kind of H-bird there, a ruby-throated, which is beautiful (as you see here). Apparently Arizona (southeastern AZ especially) is one of the best places in the WORLD to see hummingbirds. We have a chance to see over a dozen species.

Anyway, we had some other bird visitors to our H-bird feeder today. They couldn't quite figure out what the deal was there. The last photo is a hummingbird on one side and a larger bird on the other. We've also been seeing at least one of the babies around at the feeders too. Fun! Our new little additions to the family.

More from Greer...

Check out the cowboy that rode with us when we went horseback riding. He was quite a story teller and reminded me of Paul Newman.

And this pic of Andy trying to maneuver two fishing poles.

Last, but not least, Sharon, Jay & Terry reading in bed. Don't ask. It was all very respectable.

VACATION:

It looks like we can expect 100+ degrees pretty much from here on out, so that means summer's here...and we still don't have our vacation scheduled. We're trying to trade our timeshare for some places, but can't seem to get what we want in the timeframe we want. We have quite a variety of locations that we're looking for...near Banff, near Yellowstone, Aspen or Estes Park Colorado, even Washington DC, but no luck yet.

I'm starting to get desperate, although I need to be patient. This time of year I tend to get restless if we don't have anything pinned down to get out of town for an extended break. Strange thing is that I was out of town the last two weekends, but there's just something about looking forward to a week or more to relax away from the desert. I don't even really need to be leaving right away. I just need to know that we have something booked so I can anticipate it's coming. It's like Christmas...half the fun is in the expectation of what's in store.

The thing is that I get all these travel newsletters with all kinds of deals to go to Scotland or Greece or New Zealand for amazing prices and it's driving me crazy. Of course, we can't afford to go to those places, at least not this year. We're hoping to do a Hawaii cruise with friends next year so we're trying to be somewhat conservative this year. Anyway, I'm starting to look for deals in case we don't get a timeshare week when/where we want.

I'll keep you posted on what I come up with...

This sign was hanging on a front porch in Hannigan's Meadow in the White Mountains of Arizona. I just thought it was cute.