Merry Christmas from the Geese!

I have been trying to wrangle the geese into their holiday finery. They were not cooperative as you can see from their festive Carmen Miranda attire:



But finally, they agreed and voila: Christmas Geese!


Cleo once again tried to eat the antlers. At least it distracted her from the Christmas ribbon for a minute! :-)

And...as a Christmas treat, Aunt Janet sent us a beautiful basket with Amaryllis flowers in it. I am very excited that they are doing so well.

Christmas Decorations!

Richard celebrates actually getting the tree in the stand.

We have the biggest tree ever! We went to the boy scout tree lot and let Mary pick out the tree. It was dark and the tree really didn't look that big and wasn't that expensive, so we were surprised when we got it home to find that we had purchased a huge tree. We could barely get it in the door. We actually had room for all of our ornaments. Having Joseph around meant that we actually had a ornaments and lights on the top of the tree :-)

Richard, Mary and Me.

Joseph and Mary...They are so cute!

Mary and her hat

The Retro Series Rocks!

Our local theatre has been sponsoring a retro series of movies. It's a great deal and the movies are old favorites. I've actually gotten Richard to go to two of them so far. We saw Jaws last week and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of The Lost Ark last night. With a $5 ticket and $1 popcorn and drinks, it's a great deal too :-)

www.t20retroseries.com

Scenes from Halloween 2010

We had a great Halloween season this year. We got an early start this year and put some things up a few weeks in advance, adding the finishing touches the last few days before Halloween night. We had lots of drive by traffic looking at the lights and, of course, the neighbors yard.

I was glad to have Richard around because he was very helpful in putting things together and taking things down quickly before it rained. He was also instrumental in the making of THE BAT! I told him that this at least gave him the chance to put his engineering degree to work on something other than kit furniture. :-)

We had a new record for trick or treaters with 232. The costumes ranged anywhere from zombies to princesses and everywhere in between. We had a lot of Toy Story 3 characters, Elmos and Pooh bears. My favorite costume all night was a little guy in a fuzzy duck costume. He was adorable!

We gave out a ton of candy and had a great night. The kids liked the decorations. Contrary to some fears that they might be frightened, several of the smaller ones wanted to pet the giant spider and one little guy wanted to take it with him. Strange children.

Here are some photos:

Richard works on the bat. We cut the design out of a heavy piece of vinyl. Richard made a custom PVC frame and we rivetted straps to hold the bat to the frame. We also took apart a cat toy and used the green LEDs for the bat's eerie glowing eyes.

This was the baby bat. He's adorable :-)

These we took Halloween night...the quality isn't great due to the dark conditions, but it will help give you an idea of how things looked SPOOKY!

Spooky cemetery with an open grave

The witch greets visitors.

Procrastination, Thy name is Robin

Kyla and Mary are recognized by the royal court.

I have a folder titled "photos to blog" that I have barely touched in months. When I do get a few minutes to post, I always feel like I'm a season or two behind. But I figure, better late than never! So here's a collection of some of the thing's we've been up to over the last few months. We went to the Renaissance Festival this summer and had a great time as usual. The highlight for me was seeing a group of people dressed like a landing party from the Starship Enterprise comingling with the knights and ladies. They each got a big kick out of posing for pictures with one another. I did not get a photo of that because Alivia and Mary had wandered off in search of funnel cakes with my camera. We watched the jousting, did some medieval shopping and just generally had a really good day.

Cooking with cast iron

Eva and Doyle gave me a cast iron skillet for Christmas last year and I have really enjoyed it. This photo is from Mary's forays into making cornbread. I've gotten a lot of use from it as I try to learn to make decent fried chicken.

Richard at the walking park.

On days when it's not been 110 degrees in the shade here, we've been hitting the walking park for a leisurely stroll. Lately, it's been a leisurely stroll through gnats, but the day this photo was taken was very pleasant.

Mary and Boo

We've also been chronicling sleeping cats, a delightful pasttime that we have ample opportunity in which to engage. We also chronicle sleeping college students. To be honest, there's not much difference.

Richard, Mary and the cupcakes of DOOM!

More recently we had a midterm week party for Mary's friends. It featured homemade cupcakes and barbecue and some really good punch that Mary made. She also made the cupcakes, mixing the colors herself and decorating them with little spider webs. The evening featured scary movies and smores around the fire pit. It was a lot of fun :-)

I will be posting Halloween decoration photos soon...so stay tuned!

Kathy Reichs Presentation

Mary has her book signed by the author.

MTSU has a great forensic anthropology program and they host different names in the science at a symposium. We went to see Dr. Kathy Reichs who is the forensic anthropologist behind the TV show Bones. The presentation was very good. It was a light introduction to forensic anthropology, some real world cases Dr. Reichs has worked on along with some discussion of how those ideas get translated to fiction and television.

Moving Into College!

This is Mary in her dorm room during move in. This is the face she makes when I'm supposed to stop taking her photo.

This is Richard loading the car the morning of the big move.
Sadly, we did not get any photos of moving out.

Look at all the nature

This is a dove that is nesting in one of our potted plants on the porch.
We have a new nesting pair of doves every year near our house and in our backyard.
They are very sweet birds.

I have been extremely remiss in my blogging duties over the past several months. But my class at Columbia State has ended and I now have a very small smidgen of free time that I didn't have before. I have a whole folder of photos to put up here and I'm going to try to do it in categories. :-) This is the nature category...

This is a photo of the Great Flood that affected our area. This house is at the bottom of the hill from ours at the Golf Course. Our house and neighborhood is built quite a bit higher than this, and there is a creek that runs through the golf course that contributed to the flooding in these lower areas. The water has since receded and the families down here are going through repairs.

This is a great bush that I got from my editor Mindy, who attended the Franklin Arbor Day several years ago and picked up some freebies. This thing is great, blooms white and red and is very hardy. I think it's an oakleaf hydrangea, but I could be wrong!

A bird feeder from Gardener's Supply Company.

I got a great gift card for garden stuff at the Hosker family Christmas and this very cool bird feeder is one of the things I picked out. I also got some more tubtrugs to use for household stuff. They are very handy and I highly recommend them. For my birthday, I got another gift card from amazon from my mom and Don. I picked up a little garden cart that holds tools and plants. Richard calls it my radio flyer wagon with a degree in landscape design. I also got a VERY NICE set of gardening shears. Many lectures about not leaving them outside, cleaning them properly, etc have ensued. For some reason, the garden shears make me want to watch the Godfather.

These are the Bradford Pears blooming in early April. See, I told you I was procrastinating!

Happy Mother's Day!

At the baby shower for me: Patsy, Granny Hodgin, Mom (and me!)
Granny Choate, Margaret Hodgin.

Just wanting to wish all of the mothers out there a happy day. Thanks for all you do to cook and clean and make the world a better place. No one would wear clean underwear or get haircuts without your influence!

Some water photos

Here are some photos from our house during the monsoon. We are much luckier than most people. No damage so far, just some damp areas in the garage and crawlspace. I am pretty sure we are flooded in since the main roads all have creeks next to them. We don't have any large build ups of water anywhere near the house, though.

Water flowing through the front yard as it drains downhill.

This is the water that's running in the back of the property.
My dad rebuilt the back door to where only a minimal amount
of water comes through with heavy rain.

Renaming Cleo and The Bag Monster Strikes Again

Cleo looks wistfully out the window and dreams of owning her own Avocado farm.

Not much is going on in the land of Spring Hill. We had another brush with the bag monster last night. We brought home take out from Jason's Deli (featuring a brown bag with handles). Tilly jumped in the bag, got her head stuck through the handle and went tearing through the house, shedding bag parts, spare sporks, napkins and the occasional garnish. We finally cornered her in the office and Richard managed to remove the bag handle. The rest of the bag at that point had been demolished. I didn't have the time or the heart to take her picture.

This is the second time the evil Bag Monster has struck. The first time it happened to Sammy. Cats are usually very prideful creatures, but when confronted with the Bag Monster, they are very happy to have human assistance in routing the evil.

The other odd thing I've discovered this week is that Sammy and Cleo like fresh avocado. I know. It's just weird. We have all kinds of nicknames for Cleo. She's often referred to as "ominvore cat" or "printer cat" given her tendencies to eat any type of food and to coax print job repeats from the printer. (Richard discovered his Christmas presents a tad early when she reprinted the receipts off when I was out of the room.) And when I say any type of food, I mean any type of food. She loves chocolate, which is not good for her, so we have to be diligent about keeping it up. Pineapple, oatmeal, sour cream, eggs, pop tarts, potato chips, melon. No food escapes her friendly "Hey! Can I have a bite of that?" face.

In light of this, I've started calling her Omnivore Guttenburg. It's a bit of a mouthful, so maybe we'll just use it on special occasions. :-)

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

It's afternoon and we have several of inches of snow on the ground already. We're supposed to get more accumulation throughout tonight and on into tomorrow.

Richard helps me feed the birds.

some cute cat photos

(british accent): "Cat. Do you hear me cat? Get off the computer! The Daleks are coming'
This is Tilly sleeping on my laptop while I'm trying to work.
David Tennant as Doctor Who is in the background (thus the British accent).

Mooommm...I don't want to have my picture taken!

Is today over yet?

Christmas Cactus!

My Christmas Cactus is finally in bloom!!! To give you some back story on the Christmas Cactus, my mom gave me this as a housewarming gift when we moved in. It spent some time upstairs in the kitchen, only to get watered too much by me and often unceremoniously dumped by Libby. I moved it to the garage in the hopes that it would survive.

It has done so wonderfully since, on a high shelf next to one of the garage windows. It's not in a very fancy pot because, well, it lives in the garage.

This is the first time it has ever bloomed :-)

To give further backstory on the Christmas Cactus (I think it needs a name), I believe this plant is a clipping off my Grandmother Choate's Christmas Cactus that has been in her house as long as I can remember. Her cactus often blooms. She must have given hers a name sooner.