Hannah and her bugs...

Hannah the bug tammer! :) Today we went to town for the school supply give away. Every year since we have moved here we have gone (taking all the neighborhood kids). This year the donations were very limited and it just makes me sad to think of how many children go with out and it also hit home with Hannah this year. She came up with idea of a lemonade stand to raise money just in case there are any kids in her class that need supplies... Sometimes I just want to cry!! She is getting it, praise the Lord!!

More Great AZ Evening Fun

Ouch!!

Cow Pie with Cactus growing in it... OUCH!!!

Closer View

Prickly Pear growing on a board... It always amazes me when the rains come and these photos are a true testimony to that. :) Oil and Water? (still thinking) ;)

Todd, Hannah and the neighbor boys found this while walking in the mesquite grove behind our house. They also came home with their bucket full of creatures... a frog, a tarantula (gone out of the bucket before I could get a photo) and a couple of flying beetles.

The Wonderful world of outdoors!! You gotta love it!!

Pippie and the Cadillac

We bought a 76 Cadillac for $500 way back, we loved the car... it was fun to cruise around. The trunk however, was Pippie's favorite place to hang out when no one was looking.

Pippie and our Chicks...

I was looking for the photos of Todd building our first chicken coop (for Bobbie) when I came across the photos of the first day getting Pippie our wonderful Goat. The first few are of Hannah trying to feed her a carrot... she must of got bored with trying and laid down in the pen and started eating the carrot herself. I had forgotten all about these photos... thank you Bobbie for making me look for the chicken photos. ;) You can see the chicken coop in these photos and our two grouping of chickens... Those were the days and how we can not wait to do that again!

** Our secret for getting our hens to lay sometimes twice a day... We added light on a timmer, so they were getting 16 hours of light and we played soft music all day. Sometimes we would shake things up a bit and play rock, a few of them loved it! I also think by use collecting eggs twice a day helped as well... they thought, hmmm, we might have to lay some more. lol Hannah was great at collecting and would ask permission to have the eggs, Ms. Chicken can I have your egg please... and it came to a point that they really would only let her collect the eggs, well, they would get upset when we did. ;)

Mud, Mud, and more Mud! You gotta luv it!!

Todd is almost done putting his jeep together... yippie!! His friend, Shawn stopped by to show off the mud. He was going back, so we all piled into the truck and went to watch.

We tried to get a picture of the jeep, but he was too far away and got stuck. Had to wench himself out... Todd wasn't going to get stuck too! ;)

This is why you should never play in the mud in your socks.... slip, slide, whammo, dirty!

Doesn't all that mud look like fun!! Fun until I have to do wash that is.

Instead of water slides... the kids made mud slides. lol

Head first... this is going to be good. lol I was laughing so hard I didnt get a photo of the finish. ;)

Jay, doesn't this look like fun? ;) This one is posted for Hannah's cousin Jay Jay.

An afternoon of nature...

This afternoon we decided to take lead from Donna and tied apples to our tree to see what types of birds we can attract. Well, it got hot and after an hour of being outside we all decided we would try again later... it surely wasnt the movement and noise from the kids that was keeping them away. ;) lol So I am hoping tonight to get some good photos.

Here is what we did with our poor sunflower... and the praying mantis *S* brought when she picked up *M* to go home.

More Rain... This means FUN around here. :)

The mud is here!!

I was going to vaccum... Until I saw them. YIKES!!

Even the sunflower didn't make through yesterday and todays rain. :(

Friday night we had some rain... boy did we have some rain!

The water on the street was past Hannah's Knees.

Hannah and the boys caught over a 100 frogs...

What is in her bucket today?

It was a wounded Desert Spiny Lizard.

I just loved watching her walk down the road with her bucket, walking stick and hood over her head to keep the sun out of her eyes... Very Mayberryish! :)

Why did the rooster cross the road?

We don't have that answer but... Hannah had fun chasing him home.:)

Taking a drive to see what we could see...

Driving around town today, looking at mailboxes and what ever else we could see.... We spotted a huge cottonwood that was struck by lightning. The kids were awe struck.

Mother Nature at Work...