Last weekend's Izaac pictures

It was 'a little chaotic' again around here last weekend, but fun. Izaac (great-nephew) and Samantha (daughter) came to stay for the weekend. On Sunday, Alex (son) and his 'friend', Allison, and John's mom and aunt Mary all came for lunch.

John had smoked half of a boneless pork loin on Saturday (and it makes the garage smell great for a week!) and then we had all the good side dishes, too. Samantha made pumpkin bars and we had brownies and oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert.

The point of all that fun was that we didn't take many pictures with the new camera. Dang. I'm going to work on that.

"Wednesday's Wheels"

I wasn't going to blog about this, but most days there just isn't much excitement in my corner of the world, and my hubby is REALLY excited to have a new, regular-sized pickup truck!! (It's a 2005 GMC Sierra.)

The little red truck is currently being driven by (son) Alex, but he's hoping to get a new set of wheels after he finds a full-time job (after graduation from Grand View University on 4/25/09==hopefully!!). Samantha (daughter) forked over most of her tax refund on our Jeep, so it's staying in the family.

"Tuesday's titles"

"That's my Twix bar, Patrick!!" (said Izaac, rather toddler-like)

"Sometimes you just need a good head-butt to let you know you are loved..." (This was Gracie showing Alex he needs to come home more often!!!)

"Dinosaurs with computers" (well, the middle one is IT specialist, daughter Samantha, showing the other two some pictures their brother, Pat, took while vacationing in South America). This title is what my hubby said the picture shows. (That's his mom on the left and his Aunt Mary on the right.)

New camera pictures 2 21 09

This is 'Ron Santo', and I used the 'portrait' setting, so his features would be 'softened'....funny for a cat??? My favorite photo subject (our great-nephew Izaac) is napping!!! (Ron is laying on the Christmas blankie I won from Percy's raffle--Ron LOVES this blankie!!)

This is the very first picture I took with the new camera. Patrick is a handsome devil, but the cat litter container (which has bird food in it) takes the 'portrait' down a notch in class, to say the least!

Friday without a camera still....

This is a picture of Gracie last Saturday (2/14/09). You can see that Iowa in winter without snow can be a pretty drab color. Last Saturday we had a few floating snowflakes, and 60 miles south of here they had 8 inches of heavy, wet snow.


This is a video (well, it should be, but I was distracted while the video was 'uploading and processing-which translates to: I was tired of waiting, so I went in the other room to do something) of Gracie and Lucy playing last Saturday (before I didn't have a camera!!). It's short (9 seconds), but cute. They had been running out the door together and straight into that tree up to the "V", but when I got the camera ready, they were done being that cute!!

Izaac with his 'cuckoo'

These Izaac pictures were taken with (daughter) Samantha's Nikon Coolpix camera on 2/15/09 at Grandpa Markey's birthday party. I had been using it since my little HP gave out after a year and a half, so currently I don't have ANY camera to take pictures with until tomorrow (hopefully). I had borrowed her camera but gave it back Sunday because I ordered a new camera last week!!

John and I read bunches of owner reviews, and also a couple of 'expert' reviewers on cameras last week and I ended up ordering the "Fuji S8100fd". It isn't an SLR, but it's more versatile than many of the 'pocket' digital cameras. It also takes MOVIES, which Samantha's new fancy Canon Digital SLR doesn't....

Happy belated Birthday, Dad (79!!!)

This is a "McDonald's" playset my mom bought when MY kids were small (20 years ago??) and she didn't take it out of the 'playroom' (Bob's old bedroom) until they were practically in high school! Izaac (our great-nephew) discovered it upstairs yesterday when Samantha (my daughter) went to take a picture of her grandfather's cat for a picture frame he received as a birthday gift.

So this is Izaac playing with it, which he did for more than an hour without saying a word! Samantha and Michelle (Izaac's aunt, our niece) also reminisced about a cash register my mom got them when they were a little older. It had a little checkout lane attached which even beeped when you slid something over a piece of plastic (spring-loaded fake scanner spot).

No pictures of Dad, because he doesn't like his picture taken, and not everybody was there to sing 'Happy Birthday' to him. Oh well.

It's 10pm and here's where the furry kids are!

As I was trying to get Valentines ready to mail, Bogart & Patrick thought they needed to 'help' me by laying on the desk/computer and blocking the printer.

After I took Patrick & Bogie's picture, Patrick followed me over to where Ron was laying and had to be in that picture, too.

This is Georgy on the left and Lucy, laying on the cushion in the bay window.

Noel is in her usual 'downstairs' hiding place, the bathroom closet in the laundry basket (filled with cat blankies).

Here's HRH, Queenie, laying in the Prairie Room (because of the view of the Eagles and the Red-tailed Hawk) on her stack of blankets.

Gracie was in the living room laying on the love seat and it looks like she's asking "Why are you taking our pictures now, mom?"

Sunday scenes: 2 Eagles and Train Bridge in Boone

Yesterday there were TWO eagles in the field in the morning having breakfast (8am-10am). They actually were 'chirping' at each other over the carcass. Then one stayed and ate for more than an hour and the other sat a little while but then flew away.

I may try and upload the whole series of pictures from yesterday on the 'flickr' site later today, including the video of them chirping/griping over who would get to eat breakfast (turn the sound up on this one because the chirping is fairly quiet from inside my house with the fridge noise in the background).

This is the construction of the new train bridge over the Des Moines River in Boone, (IA). This is actually the SECOND construction of the new bridge, from the view of a train on the old bridge (courtesy of the 'train man'-my hubby-John).

An Eagle in the field across the road...

Yesterday I saw large wings going through the yard and then it landed in the field across the road from us. At first I thought it was a turkey-buzzard, because they're so big (and there's a dead opossum it probably was after), but when it landed, it had a really white head.

I tried to get closer, and took the camera, but when I slid the door open to get his picture I spooked him a little and he flew a little farther into the field. It came back two other times, but didn't get any closer. It was still fun. They soar so beautifully with that large wing-span. Here's a 12=second video of it taking off.

Tuxie Tuesday with the Ginger Tuxie, Ron

Ron is fascinated with water. I took a series of pictures this morning while I was filling a pitcher for a humidifier from the 'kinetico' faucet, and a 56-second video. I plan on putting the whole set of pictures and the video on the flickr site (click on the word 'flickr' in the sentence, or click on the 'Camp Stanhope flickr site' line to the right of this post) later today.

Happy Belated 80th Birthday, Uncle Charlie!!

This is a 39-second video of Uncle Charlie opening his 'big birthday card'! We're planning a bigger bash for this summer, when other family members plan on making the trip.