Family

I tried to come up with a catchy title for this post, but in the end, I decided to just go with something simple.  Really, the post is about seeing family while on vacation, and pictures from those trips, but seeing as even the most recent vacation to see family was almost two months ago, I felt it would be misleading to put "vacation" anywhere in the post title.  I had planned to share these photos shortly after returning from my North Dakota trip back in July, but time has gotten away from me once again.  I still wanted to document the trip for my own purposes, so I decided to go ahead and do a post now even though it's way after the fact.  I also figured that I could use this as an opportunity to introduce you all to my family.

I'll state right up front that this post will actually contain pictures from my last two trips home, in 2008 and 2010.  I wasn't blogging in 2008, but we got some excellent family photos during that trip whereas this trip we either didn't get great photos or we didn't get a photo at all.

Case in point.  Me and my dad.  Somehow we never got a picture of just the two of us during this trip, or even a picture of me, my sister, and him.  During my trip in 2008, well, at the airport the day I flew back home, we got this picture.  My dad is actually smiling in it, which is a small miracle!  I liked it so much that Jen, my sister, had it enlarged to an 8 x 10 and I have it framed and hanging on my wall.

Also at the airport (nothing like waiting until the last minute), we got this picture of me, Jen, and Dad.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I should probably point out that my sister is the natural blond in the family and I am the brunette.  You certainly wouldn't know it by this picture, would you?  LOL

Jen and I managed to get a picture of just the two of us this year during the Fourth of July gathering at Dad's house.  Note to self - take pictures BEFORE standing out in the wind all afternoon and for sure before standing over a hot grill for an hour or two.  Dad and I teamed up on the grill and everyone said we did a great job, excluding the two hot dogs that rolled off, so the wilted hair and melted makeup were worth it for the memories.

Dad and Jen.  And another smile from Dad!

My dad had 13 kids in his family, of which 9 are still living.  All but one of those 9 live in North Dakota and 7 of them were present for the Fourth of July gathering.  It took some near threats of violence (not really, but it did take some convincing) to get them to pose together for a picture, but we did it.  Here are my dad and his siblings.  You might notice that the not smiling for pictures is somewhat of a family trait *sigh*.

Here are me, Jen, Gloria (Dad's significant other), and Dad.  Not as good as the picture from 2008, but we'll take it.

When I was home in 2008, one of my Dad's brothers stopped by and we managed to get this picture of them.  I hadn't seen my uncle in years, but used to spend a lot of time at his farm when I was growing up, so it was great to see him and also great to get this picture of he and my dad.   They are ten years apart in age, with my dad being the younger one.  And look, they are both smiling! 

My mom also came from a large family - 10 girls.  My poor grandfather.  What he must have had to put up with!  They are all still living except for my mom.  We lost her to cancer in 1992.  A bunch of my aunts and us got together both during my trip in 2008 as well as this year.  In 2008 we were only able to meet for dinner together at a restaurant, but we got some nice pictures from that gathering.

Here are the five aunts that got together with us for dinner.  The one on the far left is my godmother and two of the other four both lost their husbands in the last year, so it's been a rough year for my mom's side of the family.

The whole group of us:

I loved this picture that Jen took of me and my aunt Judy.  We spent many a vacation at her house when I was young since she lived on a lake and her kids were roughly the same ages as Jen and I.  I see her a bit more than the rest of the family because she comes down here for vacation sometimes and usually we can at least get together for dinner.  And she has email, so it's easier to keep in touch.

And finally, a picture of a few of us cousins and another aunt (that would be number six for those of you keeping count), from this year's get together, which was held at the home of one of my aunts.  My aunt is in the front left, next to her is my cousin Michael, his wife Patti, me, Jen, and my cousin Barb.  The gathering this year was at Barb's mom's house.  For those of you who have been reading my blog since February, it was Barb's dad that I posted about losing to cancer in early February and the day we got together was the day after what would have been my uncle's birthday, so it was nice for Barb and her mom to have a lot of family around that weekend.  Barb and I were pretty close growing up and Michael is the son of my godmother so we spent a lot of time at their place too.  I hadn't seen either Barb or Michael for over 10 years, so it was great to spend some time with them.

Back from Vacation but Under the Weather

I made it back from North Dakota late Friday night as planned, but have been under the weather since mid Saturday.  UGH.  I felt better on Sunday and yesterday morning and thought I was over whatever bug I'd gotten, but it came back even worse yesterday afternoon then it had been to start with.  I still feel really crummy this morning, even after sleeping for nearly 10 hours, so we'll see how the day goes.  I didn't sleep well the entire two weeks I was gone and I'm sure the 20-30 degree temperature change coming back didn't help either.  Hopefully I will be back to normal soon.

I had a great time with my family and have pictures, etc. to share, but am just not up to it quite yet.  I visited four quilt shops and got some great fabric (you had to know I'd get fabric, didn't you LOL), saw lots of family and friends, and all in all had one of the best vacations ever.

It's All About Rugby Today

So as to set expectations accordingly right from the get go, this post is not about the sport of Rugby, nor is it about Rugby, England.  It's about Rugby, North Dakota, my home town and where I'm probably sitting and visiting with my dad right now. 

Rugby was a great place to grow up.  People are friendly, there's no violent crime, you get snow days in the winter, your vehicle comes with a block heater you plug in so your engine doesn't freeze, you get to experience temperatures well below freezing even without the windchill (hence the blockheater) which will toughen you up, and you also get to experience 100% humidity and 90+ degrees in the summer, during which you will long for the aforementioned cold weather.  Oh, and mosquitos.  Lots and lots of them just waiting for you to show up for dinner.  Really, you can have it all in Rugby *grin*. 

In all seriousness, it really is a great little town.  Probably the best and the worst feature for me is that everyone pretty much knows everyone else.  That's great in many respects because people are always willing to help each other out, but to say that nothing you do will ever be kept a secret would be an understatement.  Rugby is quite the hotbed of gossip.  News travels fast in Rugby.  Sometimes this can work to your advantage and sometimes not so much.

My DH also grew up in a small town and he said it wasn't like that where he grew up.  Our newspaper actually had gossip columns for Rugby and all of the surrounding small towns.  I'm not sure they still do it these days, but if not, that is a pretty recent change.  You could read about who visited with whom, funerals and weddings that people attended, who came home from college for the weekend, who came home from Arizona to stay with her dad for a couple of weeks, etc.  You get the idea.

Rugby does have a claim to fame.  I bet you didn't know that Rugby, North Dakota is the Geographical Center of North America.  Well, it is, and we have a monument to prove it.  I thought the dog was a nice touch in this picture.  Not sure whose he is as I pulled this picture off of the internet.

We also have a great museum.  It doesn't look like much on the outside, but it's loaded with great stuff on the inside.  We had many a field trip there for school.

There is apparently also a Victorian Dress Museum, which may or may not have been there when I was growing up.  It sounds kind of familiar, but I just don't remember for sure.  I've been gone for over 20 years at this point and things do change, even in small town North Dakota LOL.

Rugby is also home to the Pierce County Fairgrounds.  The fairgrounds is a hotbed of activity all summer.  I was fortunate enough to grow up a half a block from the fairgrounds, so we could go down there whenever we wanted and we could watch the 4th of July fireworks shows from our backyard.  It was great. 

If you want more information on any of these landmarks, and I'm sure you do *grin*, you can find it here.  I hope you enjoyed the mini tour of Rugby.  There is much more on the website that I didn't cover.

In addition, not too far from Rugby are the International Peace Gardens, a 2,339 acre botanical garden on the border of the United States and Canada.  If you are ever in the area, it's worth checking out.  There are concerts and other activities in addition to being able to just walk around the garden.  My dad, his GF and I planned to take a day trip up there the first week I was home.  If we made the trip, we will have already been there by the time you are reading this.  If I got any good pictures I'll share them when I am back home.  In the meantime, here's a nice one from the website.

I'm off to North Dakota & Minnesota

I'm getting out of this heat for a couple of weeks and will be taking off into the wild blue yonder this afternoon to head home to North Dakota and Minnesota to see my family.  I spent the first 20 years of my life in North Dakota and spent many a vacation in Minnesota where most of my mom's family lives.  It will be really nice to see everyone.

I will have virtually no internet or email access while I'm gone, other than maybe a day or two in the second week, but I've scheduled some posts for while I'm away.  Some of the highlights of those posts include tutorials for making lumpless binding without the use of a ruler or marking utensils, crocheted dishcloths, and crocheted cat mats.  Also, Koda and Maya each have a day where it's all about them.  Even though I won't be able to read or respond to comments while I'm gone , I'd still love to read them when I return, so please feel free to leave comments on any of those posts if you are so inclined :-).

Have a safe Fourth of July and I'll see you all in a couple of weeks!

We're Home/Final Vacation Pictures

We made it home as planned on Friday evening about 6:30 p.m., which is 14 hours of total travel time.  That's what it usually takes us, so the trip was par for the course and traffic was smooth.  We got the dogs picked up at the PetsHotel and they were very happy to be home.  Maya had to see the vet while she was there because of diarrhea.  She is still on the meds for a couple more days, but she is much better.  Echo was the only cat that was immediately friendly when we got home and he's been like velcro with me ever since.  Unless he's asleep, he's been pretty much keeping me in his sights at all times and snuggles whenever the opportunity arises.  At bedtime he has to sleep with as much of him as possible touching me and he just purrs and purrs and throws in head butts as he deems necessary, probably because I've just finally fallen asleep and stopped petting him.  Let's just say I haven't slept through the night since I got home.

I'm going to load up this post with all of the rest of the pictures from vacation because I have other posts I want to get to with finished quilts and some fabric for sale.  Now that it seems I am starting a Kaffe Fasset collection, I have decided to get rid of a bunch of my 30's fabric and my Christmas fabric since those are two of my least used collections.  I selected the fabric to sell yesterday, but need to take pictures, so keep an eye out for a post in the next day or two with my offerings. 

Speaking of pictures, I'll state up front that some of these are not the best.  My camera is just a little pocket Casio as a photographer I'm not, so I do the best I can with the equipment I've got, which means if something is moving, like an animal, it's probably going to be a blurry.

I'll just go in chronological order with this last post and the pictures.  We departed the house in Kerrville about 6 p.m. on Thursday night.  We pulled off to check out a house for sale that we kept seeing on the way into town and one of their neighbors had this in their front yard.  This picture is pretty indicative of much of the damage we saw around town. 

One of the houses on the street leading to ours had built their front porch around a huge oak tree that was at least a foot in diameter. Not the brightest move in my opinion, but at least when it fell during the storm it fell away from the house or they would have had much bigger problems.

Since it was early evening, we took the scenic route to the ranch down Highways 41 and 83.  There are ranches all along those roads and many of them have a lot of great wildlife.  We weren't disappointed.  It was just the right time of day and with the storm the night before, the wildlife was out in force.  We saw several herds of Blackbuck antelope (more on that species later) and several herds of Axis deer.  We have Axis at the ranch, but we didn't see any this year.  Here's a picture from the internet of a couple of bucks.  Aren't they pretty?  When you see an entire herd of them it is quite a sight.

We also saw either Elk or Red Stag along Hwy 83, as well as 6 Llamas at the ranch across the highway from the entrance to our ranch.   Hmmm, maybe those llamas that suddenly showed up at the ranch somehow crossed the road????

We took a slow drive through our ranch and were not disappointed.  We saw not one, but three male Blackbucks that were either black or turning black.  They don't turn black until they are mature, and we've only ever seen one full black one at the ranch before, so it was quite exciting to see so many.  As we made the return pass, I was about to get a decent picture of the darkest one that had come back out of the trees when a truck came from the other direction and scared them.  I had gotten an "on the run" picture the first past through, but it's not good at all.  Blackbuck antelope are one of the fastest animals on earth, if not thee fastest, and they don't wait around if they are startled.

Here is a picture of a male Blackbuck that has not yet turned black.  I tried to get out for a better picture and he bolted, so this is the best I got.

And here are two other Blackbucks, one that is completely black and one that was starting to turn.  This is an awful picture as they were on the run, and on the opposite side of the van from me, so right below this picture is a picture from the internet of a mature male Blackbuck.

I thought that was it for the animal pictures, but then I remembered that we had another little caterpillar stop by as we were packing the van.  This one is fuzzy and I finally had to relocate him/her to the grass so they didn't get stepped on during one of our many trips in or out the door.  Maybe he just came to check out the new porch :-).

I already knew that I had a package of goodies from Jackie waiting for me at home because the tracking information told me at had arrived.  Jackie had a great Memorial Day sale.  I figured I wouldn't be able to participate as I wasn't about to use the unsecured McDonald's connection and risk exposing my PayPal account, but by some small miracle, I had a good enough connection at the house on Sunday morning that I could actually load pictures.  Normally, the neighbor's connection is like being on dial up so loading any kind of picture is usually out of the question.  Anyway, I got a small order put together and managed to get it all done and paid for just before the connection died.  It must have been fate for me to have these fabrics to add to my new Kaffe Fasset collection.  Most of these will be used with the Kaffe fabrics I bought at Creations.

 

During the trip home I had daylight all the way (on the way out we drive during the night to start) so I got more dishcloths done, a total of 8.  Here they are.  A commentor on the last dishcloth post asked about the pattern.  I will post that in a different post soon.

I started finishing off some of the dishcloths yesterday while I was watching Hallmark movies in my sewing room.  I actually got a lot done in my sewing room yesterday, but mostly cleanup stuff so nothing fun to show.

And that concludes the documentary about the Kerrville 2010 trip.  I am leaving again in a few weeks to go home and visit my family, but DH is staying home as it's just too expensive for both of us to travel and to have to pay for pet care.  I found cheap plane tickets way back in January and we did the same for him last December when he went to see his family for two weeks.  You gotta do what you gotta do when both of our families are many states away and you have as many animals as we do. 

Crocheting by Candlelight

That is certainly not a post title that I ever expected to use!  Wednesday night was our last night in Kerrville and a massive thunderstorm came through with extremely high winds.  The news had said that they thought MAYBE north Kerrville would get a bit of the storm.  We are in south Kerrville, so we figured we would get missed.  Not so.  All of Kerrville got slammed.  We couldn't believe some of the damage we saw when we went out yesterday.  Huge mature trees just snapped.  Sheds from a home improvement/hardware store up in the trees behind the store.  Roof partially ripped off of a furniture store.  It was BAD.

And guess who ended up being out and about in the thick of it.  Yes, that would be us.  DH decided that he needed a DQ blizzard as a reward for scrubbing the floors in the kitchen and bathrooms.  Why do men always think they deserve a reward for stuff like this?  He spent three days digging and piling rocks around the foundation of the house and not a word about DQ, but spend an hour sweeping and mopping floors and we must...go...now!  He actually got delayed about two hours because just as we were walking out, the handyman called and said he was on the way so he had to wait until after dinner to go.

When we left, the skies were clear.  Until we got further into town.  Then it was really dark to the north and west and we figured the ranch was getting hit.  It was 87 degrees on the way to DQ.  On the way back it had dropped to 83 in the same spot.  As we made the turn off the highway towards home, it was down to 82.  A half mile later, we got a few rain drops and then without warning, the rain was coming down in sheets and was blowing sideways on the road right at us and the temperature read 66.  We were driving north at that point, which was the direction the wind and rain were coming from.  Another mile and we were home.  We made a mad dash for the porch and still got soaked before we could get inside given that the porch was serving as a funnel for the wind and rain.  The sound of the wind rushing through the porch and the deck was amazing.  We were actually kind of shocked that we didn't have any damage when all was said and done.  The good news is that the sealing of the deck and porch did it's job magnificantly and the roof repair we had done last week seemed to hold up pretty well too.

The bad news is that we had only been home for about five minutes before the power went out.  It had blipped a couple of times while we were setting our stuff down.  Hence the title of the post.  We got out the candles and still had a bit of light from outside, so I sat at the table and crocheted by candlelight.  We woke up once at midnight and the ceiling fan was running, but when I woke up again later it was off again.  By about 8 yesterday morning we no longer had running water and toilets couldn't refill since the septic system can't run without electricity.  We decided that we best go try and get water for filling the toilets and to wash the dishes as well as ice to pack up the fridge contents since we were closing up the house yesterday anyway to head back home.  We stopped for breakfast at McDonald's on the way back and when we got home at 10 a.m. we had power.  Better safe than sorry I guess.  The neighbors next door didn't get theirs back until mid afternoon.  The people across the street from us never lost power at all, yet others on that side of the street did.  Strange.

This morning I am typing this from our hotel in a small town near the ranch where we spent the night.  We will be hitting the road shortly and should be home this evening.  With the two hour time difference, we hope to get back to Phoenix early enough to pick up the dogs from the kennel rather than waiting until tomorrow morning.  We've been able to make it every other year, so fingers crossed that this year will be no different.  Talk to you again soon from Phoenix.  I hope!

 

The Deck & Porch are Done!

I am once again sitting here at McDonald's, sipping my soda, and I have some finishes to report, but not of the quilting kind. I sealed the back deck on Saturday and finished the front porch today. I used Thompson’s water seal in Honey Gold. We are really pleased with how they turned out.

Here is the before picture of the deck:

And here is the after:

After cutting cedar on Friday and doing the deck on Saturday, I could barely move on Saturday night, so I told DH he could forget about me getting the porch done during this trip given that it is a third bigger than the deck.

Well, I woke up feeling pretty good on Sunday morning, so I figured if I got started early, I could get quite a bit done before it got hot. While working on the deck I finally got smart about half way through and realized that if I did two boards at a time, I would only have to move back and forth half as many times. Duh. So, using that approach on the porch, I was able to get about two thirds of the porch done in the same time it had taken me to do the back. I was out of sealer at that point, so had to stop anyway. I picked up another gallon later that day and finished up the porch this morning.  I am so glad to have that project done!

Here is the finished porch.  I took this picture right after finishing, so the wet looking spot in the upper part of the picture is where it is still drying.

And here is a combo before/after shot when the porch was partially done so you can see what a difference the sealer made.

We went back to the ranch yesterday and spent about 6 hours clearing more cedar. This time our only visitor was a cottontail bunny. I think that ends the manual labor for this vacation. We still have some things to do around the house, but nothing as labor intense as the other projects we’ve done.

Since it was early morning when we drove out, I had the camera ready in case we saw any animals. I got a pretty good picture of some white tail bucks that are currently in velvet and growing their antlers. They were on our neighbor’s property (not the one we've been visiting with), which is part of the ranch, but which he was allowed to enclose with an internal fence. Don’t even get me going on that topic because we were told internal fencing was not allowed, but money talks and those of us without the big bucks just have to suck it up and deal with it. Anyway, here are the deer. Zoom in to see them better.



The big surprise was when we came upon a few aoudad sheep grazing right along the road. They are extremely skittish, so they took off about the time I got the camera on them. I didn’t even have time to hit the zoom, so this picture is not very good, but hopefully you can see the aoudad on the left. If you zoom in , it’s the brown spot with horns. Both the male and female of this species have horns. This is the only picture of I’ve gotten of an aoudad at the ranch so it will have to do.



Here’s a picture of an Auodad from the internet so you can see what they actually look like. We got to see baby aoudads one year and they were like goats on steroids.  So cute!

Oh, and we did see the donkeys again when we did a quick drive of the main road. We haven’t seen the llamas again, which is a bummer as we only got a good look at the one. We would have liked to get a closer look at the other two as well.

Dishcloth Mania

My preferred handwork for the drive to and from Texas is either crocheting dishcloths or binding small quilts. Since I didn’t have the binding attached to the quilts for the drive out, I started working on some dishcloths. That got the crochet urge going again after being dormant for several months, so I’ve gotten more dishcloths done while we’ve been here.

Here are the ones I’ve finished so far. These will most likely end up as gifts or for charity. Either way I just enjoy making them and using up some of my dishcloth yarn stash.  I still need to finish off the ends, but I'll do that step for all of them in one sitting.  It's not my favorite thing to do, so I'll wait until I am watching a good movie to make it tolerable.

Clearing Cedar is Hard Work

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who left comments re: the anonymous comment I received the other day regarding my husband's hunting activities.  While I haven't had enough time at McDonald's to both respond to comments and get my posts loaded, I have read them all and appreciate both your thoughts and your visiting my blog.  Also, as soon as I saw that comment, I changed the settings on my blog so anonymous comments are no longer allowed.  I figured I'd allow them until there was a problem and that time as now come.

And now on to current events.  The deer DH got his first morning of hunting pretty much gave us all of the meat we need right now (94 pounds total once the pork was added for the sausage!!!), so we have been working on little projects at the house since then. Yesterday we decided to head out to the ranch to clear cedar that has grown up in areas where we don't want it. That is some seriously hard work for this desk jockey. To add insult to injury, it was hot and there was no breeze, which is rare at the ranch. But we did get a lot done and also had a nice visit with our neighbor. He gave us a tour of their new house that should be finished in 8-10 weeks. It’s gorgeous and they have what I consider the best hilltop at the ranch on which they built their house. Consequently, they have stunning views. They plan to live there for at least the next 20 years, so it’s a worthwhile investment for them. We don’t plan to build on our property at the ranch as I don’t want to live that far from town. So we will save our pennies for our dream house closer to town.

As we were clearing the cedar, we had a couple of visitors. I was busy cutting and heard a noise behind me. I turned around to see a snake about 8 feet from me and raised about a foot off the ground. As soon as I turned around, it lowered itself and went back into the bush from which it came. We have only seen one other snake at the ranch, just like this one, which was a cream color with a small head and pointy tail, although the other owners have seen rattlesnakes, copperheads, and coral snakes. While this snake was kind of intimidating at over 3 feet in length, I was pretty certain that it was a harmless variety. Nevertheless, I kept an eye out for it. It did pop out again a bit later, but went right back in the bush.

I moved on to another tree nearby and noticed that it was hollow at the base with a large opening that would be perfect for something to inhabit, so I was being extra careful. Sure enough, here comes our friend again, or one just like it around the other side of the tree. We had to wait and watch it while it went through our entire work area, pass by my water bottle and then go back the direction from which it had come and then finally it left.  That was the last we saw of it for the rest of the day. If that snake was the original one I saw, it had already circled around behind us once. This one completely ignored us and just went about it’s tour of the area. Surprisingly, I didn’t panic during either sighting and didn’t even come close to screaming either time. I just calmly alerted DH to the presence of a snake. Had it been a rattlesnake, I most likely would have had a different reaction!! I’m thinking that it/them came out thinking there might be prey in the area after feeling the ground vibrations from us tossing the cut branches and limbs on the ground. I was armed with my large cutters so I wasn’t completely defenseless had it gotten aggressive, and DH was working with a machete so we probably could have handled it, although Steve Irwin we are not! As long as they leave me alone, I will leave them alone. 

I did a quick internet check of Texas snakes after we got back to town and we have concluded that the snake(s) we saw were definitely Eastern Yellow-Bellied Racers, which are indeed non-venomous.  I will spare you a picture from the internet, but please feel free to google for one on your own :-).

My next project is to water seal the back deck and DH is finishing putting rocks around the foundation. We may go back to the ranch tomorrow for more clearing, depending on if we think our muscles can handle it.

A Whole Pile of Quilts Ready for Binding

I got a bunch of small quilts quilted before leaving for Texas and I brought them and the bindings I had made, as well as fabric for a couple more bindings, with me to finish here. I’ve now got the rest of the bindings made and all have been attached. I finally came up with a way of finishing the binding with a final seam at the end without involving any rulers or drawing of lines on the fabric.

Here’s the pile of little quilts all ready for the hand sewing down of the binding. There are 6 quilts in the pile – my two little quilts from the Moda Blush charm pack (pieced in 2010), Sweet Sixteen (pieced in 2010), Halloween Cat quilt (UFO), Bargello quilt (UFO), and Playtime (pieced in 2010).

We’ve been having nightly visitors in our yard again this year. We have two white tail does that have come by each night. They show up when it’s almost dark, so this picture isn’t the best, but you can see them in the side of the yard.

DH also found this beautiful caterpillar while working in the yard. The white parts in the picture were actually lime green so it was very colorful.

He was also surprised by a black scorpion on one of the rocks he picked up.  He thought it was dirt initially.  Don't worry, he didn't get stung.  We know they have scorpions here, so we keep an eye out, just like at home, but we didn't realize that they had black scorpions as we've never seen one that color.  I took a couple of pictures of him/her on the rock, but I'll spare you those. 

For those of you needing a Sassy fix, here’s a picture of her examining the watermelon I bought to bring on the trip.  She's such a nosey nelly.  Always has to take part in everything.

Stash from Creations Quilt Shop

The stash enhancement is complete for this trip as I have maxed out my budget, but I got everything I wanted so I don’t feel that I missed out on anything. Creations has one of the best batik selections that I’ve ever seen, but I actually passed them up and barely glanced at them. Instead, I was focused on their Kaffe Fassett and dot fabrics. I managed to find some of both in the sale section so that was an extra bonus. Here’s my haul for the trip.

Kaffe Fassett fabrics with a few other Westminster designers thrown own, but mostly Kaffe:

Dot fabrics, some of which are also Kaffe Fassett, but I don’t plan to use them with the other Kaffe fabrics:

Bright fabrics and a cat pillow case kit that I couldn’t resist after seeing the sample.  Like you're surprised I bought something with cats!

Flannel fat quarters from the sale section. I have a specific plan for these, so hopefully they will get used soon.

Miscellaneous other fabrics. These were all from the sale section, even the batik.

We are heading out to the ranch right now to do some clearing of the growth that has occurred since we were here last year.  Nothing like some manual labor to get the blood pumping!!

Well It Took Five Months...

Having seen it happen to other bloggers, I figured it was only a matter of time before I received an Anonymous comment attacking me or the content of my blog. I have been blogging for nearly five months and had been safe from such comments until today. I told my husband when I initially posted about him being a hunter that I could possibly offend some people or lose some readers who were against hunting. If that applies to you, I respect your views, but I would ask that you also respect that my blog is not only about my quilting, but about my life, of which my hunter husband is obviously a big part.

“Anonymous” commented today on my post about my husband’s deer he got on Tuesday and suggested that not only I refrain from posting pictures of dead animals, which by the way I did not, nor did I ever intend to do, but to also limit my blog content to my quilting and homemaking activities. Seeing as they left the comment anonymously, I cannot respond to the poster personally, but would probably want to address this issue publically anyway since the comment was displayed publically.

My husband doesn’t kill wild game animals for sport. He’s a meat hunter and he does it to keep our freezers full. We consider it one of the ways we can eat more natural, organic food. I will assume that “Anonymous” must be a vegan that doesn’t eat any of “God’s creatures”, as she referred to them, because if she buys any meat at all, including tuna in a can, that simply means that someone else killed and packaged God’s creatures for her. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but those are the facts. The animals didn’t get into those packages on their own.

Hubby Had Competition for Bringing His Deer Home Today

Well, it appears that we have another new addition to the ranch and this time it’s not of the friendly sort. The good news is that DH went out at zero dark thirty this morning for his first morning of hunting and less than an hour into it he had dropped a Sika buck. This was the animal at the top of our list to get this year, so he was pretty happy until he tried to retrieve it and was chased away by bees. Turns out the deer dropped at the base of a tree inhabited by Africanized Bees. This is not something we’ve ever had at the ranch before and we certainly hope they are temporary residents that will be moving on soon.

I called our neighbor for help so there was at least a chance that someone could call 911 if they were swarmed. Long story short, it took them an hour, but the neighbor was finally able to get close enough to get a rope around the antlers. The guys then pulled the deer out with 50 feet of rope with the bees still following the deer for about 20-30 of those feet. DH got stung three times on the ear and neck, the only areas exposed on him, and the neighbor, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt didn’t get stung at all. Given how many times the two of them were run off by the bees, it’s a small miracle that they weren’t stung more times. I’m allergic to insect stings so I wouldn’t have been able to help even if I’d been there. Same goes for the neighbor’s wife. She’s more allergic than I am so she stayed far away.

Normally we take pictures of each animal, but by the time they got the deer out, it had been down for 2 hours and DH still had an hour drive to get it to town to the processor so they just loaded it up and he took off, so I never got to see what the deer even looked like.  As we are sitting here at McDonald’s where I’m posting this from, he tells me that when he walked up our road to get the van prior to retrieving the deer, he ran into the donkeys and they thought he was chasing them. He said the bigger one would turn around and scold him every once in awhile. The poor guy just couldn’t get a break today out at the ranch!

I did get pictures of the donkeys when we made a quick drive through the ranch on Monday. Unlike the bees, they are sort of friendly. They came walking towards the van, but then walked away when I got out to take pictures. We asked the neighbor and he said the donkeys and the llamas showed up a couple of months ago about the same time and no one seems to know where they came from.

When we encountered the donkeys and the llamas the first night, DH joked, “What’s next, a zebra?”

Well guess what? As we were leaving the ranch on Monday, sure enough, we saw a zebra! The ranch across the road from ours apparently has one. It was running with some Blackbuck Antelope. I managed to get one quick picture through the van windshield before they headed off behind the trees. Zoom in for a better look.

Oh, and I got my sewing space set up here and it’s even better than the setup I have at home. I must have expressed my excitement over this a few too many times as an hour or so after I got it all set up, DH stands in the doorway to the room and says “Baby, when I look in this room, it just takes my breath away.” Smart alec.

I do like it though. At home I am only able to set up my sewing machine in my sewing room because it’s actually the guest bedroom. I have to set up the ironing board elsewhere and I have to do my cutting on the kitchen island. The table here is even the correct height. At home I have to stand on phone books and at Dawn’s I have to stand on a step to work on her cutting table. I didn’t even buy the table. It came with the house so bonus for me.

Here’s my setup here at the house in Kerrville:

Interesting First Visit to the Ranch

We arrived in the Texas Hill Country late yesterday afternoon, so we headed out to the ranch last night just to check things out and see how things looked this year.  As expected, there has been a lot of growth since last year due to all the rain this year.  The wildflowers were in bloom everywhere.  Most of the time we've owned the land, it's too dry for the flowers.  This is only the second time we've seen this many and seen the prickly pear cactus in bloom as well.

We saw the usual white tail deer that hang around our property.  As we were walking down our road, this whitetail doe started to come bounding out of the brush when she suddenly saw us and about fell over backward trying to go back the direction from which she had come.  It was so funny.  She clearly wasn't expecting to encounter people.

When we got to our back meadow we noticed something grazing.  Hmmmm, that doesn't look like anything we've ever seen on our property before.  The ranch is about 1600 acres total, made up of about 15 landowners.  There's no internal fencing allowed so all of the animals can roam.  The wild game in residence are White Tail deer, Axis deer, Sika deer, Fallow deer, Blackbuck antelope, and Auodad sheep.  As of last year there were also a few long horn cattle.  But donkeys?  Not so much.  Yes, we found two donkeys grazing in our meadow so someone must of released them on the ranch.  We weren't told about it, so we'll have to ask our neighbor if he knows anything.

Speaking of the neighbor, we decided to go say hello after seeing the donkeys so we headed up their hill.  They weren't at their trailer so we decided to go check and see if they were in the house they are building, which is new since we were out last year.  What the heck????   There's a Llama in their yard!!!  Then we look down their hill and there's two more Llamas down there.  Just for the record, we don't have Llamas at the ranch either.  At this point we are about on the ground laughing.  We've got a Llama to our left and the donkeys have strolled up and they are to our right.  We never did find the neighbors to ask them about these new additions.  Who knows what else is new that we didn't encounter yet.  It's still dark when my husband goes out hunting in the morning.  Can you imagine if he'd enountered these in the dark.  He knows what to expect from the other animals on the ranch, but a Llama charging out of the bush at 6 a.m. could be quite a surprise. 

I'm Leeeeeaaving on a Jet Plane

Don't know when I'll be back again.  Remember that song by John Denver?  I think I still have the album.  Yes, I said album.  I don't have anything to play it on, but why would that be a reason not to keep it? 

That's what I thought.

Anyway, I really am leaving, but that first part is a lie.  I'm not leaving on a jet plane.  I'm leaving in a mini van, but that doesn't sound nearly as glamorous, does it?   I didn't think so.  I mean, have you ever heard a song about leaving in a mini van?

And well, the second part is a lie too because I do know when I'll be back, or at least when we hope to be back, but I'll just surprise you with an announcement when that happens.

You see, we are heading out for our annual trip to our properties in Texas.  We have 60 acres of hunting property on a game ranch in the Texas Hill Country and my husband is going to do his hunting thing and hopefully fill the freezer for another year.  We have some really cool deer species and other animals on our property, so with luck I will have some good pictures to show you.  If not, I'll show prior years pictures.  We also purchased a little house in 2008 in Kerrville, the town we hope to retire to someday.  Kerrville is an hour from the ranch so I don't get to spend as much time at the ranch these days, but the house is only 15 minutes from Creations, one of the best quilt shops I've ever been to.  So, the vacation is a win-win for both DH and I, although I do miss staying on the ranch.  Until late 2008, we were able to rent a two bedroom house on the ranch and within walking distance of our property, but the owners sold it in 2008 so it's no longer available.  The amount of wildlife that I got to see on a daily basis out at the ranch was amazing, but we do still see some white tail deer in the yard at the house in town, so I'll take it.  It's better than nothing.

The last year that we were able to stay at the ranch there was a group of three young Sika deer that we saw frequently.  We figured they were siblings.  As we drove the ranch road before leaving the last morning, they were up near the road and I got some great pictures.  The young little buck was so curious and came even closer to the van when we stopped.  While the ranch is a hunting ranch, you aren't supposed to shoot from the road, so some of the deer don't tend to be as afraid of vehicles driving by slowly or stopping.  Even if they run, many times they stop and look back so it makes for some great animal watching. 

Here are some pictures from that morning.  You may not be able to tell, but one of the females is the dark chocolate color, one is the reddish color with light spots, and the male is obviously the reddish color with lot of spots.  The spots are one of the coat colors for this species.  You can see that the male is not a fawn.  He's got little antlers starting.

And here's a picture of them earlier that trip with what we assume is their mother, the larger chocolate female in the picture.

I am hoping to be able to blog some from Texas even if it means a trip to McDonald's to use the wi-fi.  Last year we got lucky and our neighbor didn't have his wireless network secure so we were able to use it.  If he hasn't changed the settings, we will ask him again this year if he minds us hopping on from time to time.

I got all of those little quilts quilted so I'm hoping to get them bound while we are in Texas, along with working on a few other projects.  I get a lot of hand work done in the car while DH is driving so binding little quilts or crocheting are usually my projects of choice for the drive.  If I can't post pictures while we are gone I should have bunches to show when we get back!