31 July 2010

12 months

Same visors

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{august 2009}

Same swimsuits

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{august 2009}

But, oh what a difference

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{august 2010}

a year can make!

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{august 2010}

26 July 2010

“stay-at-home”days

My boys fondly refer to Saturday and Sunday as “stay-at-home” days and they enthusiastically countdown to the weekend by counting how many “wake-ups” remain for the week.

As in…..after tonight, there are four more “wake ups” before it finally having two “stay-at-home” days!

Deep in the heart of the dog days of summer, how will you find us spending our “stay-at-home” days?!

::poolside::

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::shades on::

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::keeping cool::

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24 July 2010

Corks-n-Canvas

Last night….. two of my girlfriends (one of which blogs here) visited Corks-n-Canvas, a local business with a fabulous premise. 

Corks :: wine

Canvas ::  painting

wine + painting = great Friday night entertainment for three girlfriends

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Fifteen minutes of munching….. havarty and brie cheeses, grapes and strawberries, blue cheese&scallion dip with soda wafers……

Let’s Get This Party Started!

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The {scheduled} painting of the night:  House of the Rising Sun II

(click the link above if you feel compelled to know what the picture was supposed to look like)

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This is essentially my completed painting (I tweaked it a bit more later)! 

  {cheers}  {claps}  {bravos}

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(cute blond with sunglasses atop her head in the background of all these pictures…..yea, don’t know her, but she and her friend that were across the table from us; they sure were nice!  Ok, let’s continue…..)

 

And here’s the artwork of my cohorts!!

(Isn’t interpretation a beautiful thing?!….at least that’s what my dear friend kept reminding me)

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-Pay little attention to the {three} bottles of wine in the above picture-

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3 ladies, 3 bottles….that’s how it works, right?!

 

**MUST quit using iPhone for blog pictures…..quality is not as great as I initially thought, even with editing**

 

20 July 2010

{building} Home Sweet Home 7.0

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**first iPhone4 pics to be posted to blog….quality is pretty good especially after being compressed in an email, extracted, edited, and exported!**

19 July 2010

THAT game

Buck-a-roo:  “Momma, I wanna play that game where there’s a category and then I guess and you dunk me and flip me in the water!”

Me:  “OK dude…..category is animals.”

Buck-a-roo:  “Elephant”

Me:  “Hold your breath!”

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Buck-a-roo:  “Lion”

Me:  “Hold you breath”

Buck-a-roo:  “Gimme a hint!”

Me:  “It’s on a farm.”

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Buck-a-roo:  “Horse”

Me:  “Nope.  Hold you breath.”

Buck-a-roo:  “Cow”

Me:  “ YOU GOT IT!  HOLD YOUR BREATH!”

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Buck-a-roo:  “Ok, Frank-o, it’s your turn.”  “I’ll pick for him Mom.”  {whispers loudly to me}  “Hawgk!”

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Me:  “Ok lil’ dude…..guess!”

Frank-o:  “Lion” *

Me:  “Hold your breath!”

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Frank-o:  “Horse” *

Me:  “Nope, hold your breath.”

Frank-o:  “Gimme a hint Momma!”

Me:  “It’s on a farm.”

Buck-a-roo:  “NO, it’s not mom!”

Me:  “Uh, yea buddy, I think it is.” {puzzled}

Buck-a-roo:  “No, mom, it flies in the sky!!!”

{chuckling to myself}  ::I thought he had whispered hog in my ear, when he had actually said hawk**::

Me:  “Yea, Frank-o…..it flies through the sky!”

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Frank-o:  “EAGLE!!”

Me:  {close enough}  “YOU GOT IT!  HOLD YOUR BREATH!”

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* note the repetition of Buck-a-roo’s answers by Frank-o; as of lately Frank-o parrot-ly mimics every thought, decision, gesture that his brother has/does.  you ask him a question and he answers with, “What’s Buck-a-roo having?”

** like ever in a million years Frank-o would have guessed a……hawk!

Do you remember playing that game in the swimming pool as a kid……I DO!!

12 July 2010

global wildlife

This past weekend, the boys and I went to a birthday party for my friends’ son at a large (read: 900+ acres) outdoor wildlife preservation, Global Wildlife Center. It is the single largest wildlife preservation {not for profit} of its kind. Who knew?!

The premise of the party is to board a covered wagon pulled by tractor for an 1 1/2 long tour where you are able to feed from cup, or literally from the palm of your hand, many, many, many different species of animals.

This place is all about the animals. The 35+ different species of animals roam free throughout the land as you can see from the above picture. We didn’t far past the cattle guard before we had to stop to let these Fallow Deer cross the road.

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“Look here boys for a picture before we go over to the party!”

…..maybe the animals will be more cooperative for the camera, ya think?….

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Following a healthy serving of cake and ice cream threefold, we anxiously boarded the covered wagon to hear the rules and hit the preservation.

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There are literally thousands of animals roaming the grounds just waiting for you to toss ‘feed’ their way. They. Are. Not. Shy.

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The tractor pulls four wagons deep and the animals follow along allowing you to feed, pet, and photograph freely!

There are deer for days……it’s like a south Louisiana game hunters paradise, except it’s NOT!

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I wish I could, but I cannot correctly identify every animal that I took a picture of because there were just so many different species. Our tour guide, Carmen, was fantastic! Cute, funny, and a wealth of knowledge.

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This is an antelope of some sort that they fondly refer to as “Old Blue” because he’s currently their oldest living animal. He was super kid-friendly.

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Has anyone noticed that the animals look at the camera better than my boys did earlier.

OK……just checking!!

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I took many pictures of the Fallow Deer as I liked their spots and they were quite abundant in number (the deer, I mean. not the spots. well, the spots were abundant too I suppose).

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Let’s get a collective, “OOh” and “AAh” and “they’re soooo cute” for the two little guys that were a mere two days old! Frank-o loved them……he said they were just ‘his size’!

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As for the practical jokester of the day……well that’s this rather large guy that proceeded to lift the feed cup right from Buck-a-roo’s hand. After nearly breaking my neck reaching for my camera and photographing the humor, I coerced the antelope back to the wagon with my feed cup and snagged Buck-a-roo’s feed cup back for the rest of our travels.

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This is a two-hump (obvious, right?!) camel from Asia. I vaguely remember our tour guide mentioning two details about him:

a) to dispel a myth, camels do NOT store water in there humps, but rather in their bladder in the roof of their mouth and that this particular camel can go two weeks without water. {makes me think that a ‘leaky bladder’ isn’t all that bad, if you’re a camel}

b) he was sequestered behind the fence for foul behavior of some sort {you know, if you can’t get along and play nicely with everyone, then you must go play alone}

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All I can think when I see this picture is…… ”Go, Diego, Go!” which was coincidentally the theme of the birthday party.

This llama was impressively intelligent. He would make his way down the 4 covered wagons from front to back scouring down food all along the way only to sprint to the front of the train, if you will, and do it all again and again, and again.

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Collectively, among my boys, this was their favorite animal.

Why?

They’re from Louisiana. They are sons/grandsons of avid hunters. Hunters like antler. Big antlers. Enough said.

To Buck-a-roo and Frank-o, these Red Stag deer were the end all be all of the animals that we saw.

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“Hey boys, what’s the ONE animal that Ms. Carmen said we may not pet or feed?”

…..the zebra…..

“That’s right! And, why is that?”

…..they BITE!…..

“Good! I see we all had out listening ears on, now let’s just remember that, mmmmkay?!”

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LOOK OUT!! It’s a stampede of baby {just days old} ostriches!

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It was hot!

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REALLY hot!!

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REALLY, REALLY hot!!!

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Even the animals use their innate survival skills to dig holes that eventually fill with rain to provide some relief from the sweltering heat.

Pretty smart, I’d say!

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Speaking of digging…..my boys dug deep and hung in and didn’t complain about the heat, not once! They were spectacular and had a terrific time!

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Did I mention???

IT WAS HOT!!

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