My Little Soapbox

What we saw tonight outside:

To give you an idea of size the trees in the pictures are a field length away from where I was standing. The clouds towered over us but weren’t scary since they were big and fluffy. The sun was setting when I snapped my pictures which made interesting lighting but mostly made it so I couldn’t see what I’d photographed on my camera. I was pretty pleased to find a couple of decent pictures. The bird in the one photo is our egret (or maybe heron) that lives by our creek. I can’t recall the last time we saw clouds that tall. It made for a wonderfuly site tonight.

Just a few highlights of our day at the State Fair.

Lil’B is making his dragon breathe “fire”

Jr. has a repeat of last years face painting choice of skull and crossbones

We found the biggest piggie bank tucked back by the train exhibit. I was impressed with the work that the train modelers (is that even the right word?!) had done. The exhibit has gotten better and more intricate each year and continues to be a favorite stop of ours.

Jr. watching the swans at the DNR exhibit.

Lil’B telling Daddy something neat about what he’s seeing at the DNR exhibit.

Our grass is overgrown and now seeding. On one hand I’m frustrated because its 4ft tall and an end it no where in sight. On the other hand the birds are loving the seeds and we are catching glimpses of several new birds on our place.

See this beauty! She’s a Halictid Bee and graced pool time the other day. Be sure to click through for better photos of this pretty bee!

This is my two cuties waiting in line at the local amusement park. They got to spend the day checking out various rides and generally having a good time.

But the behinds I’m actually talking about belong to we the parents. We are behind in so many small ways this week that we’ve gotten to the weekend only to find everythings jumbled up and needs to be done NOW. So today we took care of some of the lawn, garden, family stuff. We’re working on catching up with the cleaning, sorting and throwing that is all over the house. It is my personal pet peeve to wake up Saturday morning and find your weekend is already booked with crap that could have been done during the week. So you can imagine that I’m grumpy. This always happens when Daddy has multiple nights away from home. It is like the whole week waits until he gets home then dumps all those little must-do-jobs on us all at once. - blowing our entire weekend.

End whine. Cue work.

Last week our puppy Harley sniffed out this little critter.  We are assuming on his location that this little bat had an unfortunate fall to the ground.  Before we put him in a different tree we took a moment to shoot some quick pictures and take a careful look at his structure. We were even graciously shown his little teeth as he did not appreciate the large “giants” moving around him. We attempted to be careful not to stress him more than necessary and the little bat calmed down once the dog was in the house. (Have you ever called a six month puppy off a bat on the ground - not exactly fun!). This photo makes him look like he’s already dead but he’s really just trying to cling to the bucket!

My pretty peonies before this last batch of storms.
They didn’t quite survive in all their glory after this last batch of storms.

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We find some strange things in our lawn after a storm, but this orange covered branch was something new. What is that stuff? A fungus? A lichen?