Great Horned Owls

Spring has sprung in Colorado....We have lots of wildlife around the area. Last week we discovered a Great Horned Owl nest in one of the trees at work. There is one fledgling which had fallen out of it's nest; but one of our 'Firemen' climbed up the tree and returned it to the nest. I managed to get a couple of pictures of the mom and baby this morning. They are beautiful birds, so I thought I would share the pics with you!
Remember you can click on the pic to enlarge it....

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

In celebration of all 'mom's' I decided to share some (smiles and) quotes on motherhood by Erma Bombeck. She has always been one of my favorite humourists.....Ever since I read the book 'The Grass is always greener over the septic tank'.

I also want to send special wishes to my mom, my mom-in-law, and my aunt; three women who are an important part of my life. I Love you all! Have a Very Happy Mother's Day!

Erma Bombeck on Motherhood:

“One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.”

"No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday."

"Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?"

"Mothers have to remember what food each child likes or dislikes, which one is allergic to penicillin and hamster fur, who gets carsick and who isn't kidding when he stands outside the bathroom door and tells you what's going to happen if he doesn't get in right away. It's tough.
If they all have the same hair color they tend to run together."

"When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway. "

Cinco de Mayo Recipes

Well Cinco de Mayo is upon us. Living in a mostly Hispanic area, we have lots of great Mexican restaurants. Hatch chili's (from New Mexico) are the best green chili's! They are great roasted and added to almost any dish. We like to eat hamburgers with strips of roaste green chilis, or chopped up and covering scrambled eggs! Roasted green chili's are great stored in the freezer; for use any time of year. One word of warning though.....The longer the chili is stored in the freezer, the hotter it gets! (This from a University Extension on Chili Peppers; and I believe it!).

I thought I would share a couple of simple (but tasty) recipes in celebration of this day. The Stuffed Jalepeno Pepper recipe is from a friend of ours at work. Gene makes these for almost every potluck at work, and there are never any left over. I make them at least once a month or twice if we can stand the heat! We love them!
I hope you enjoy these recipes.......Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Fun with Photoshop CS3

I have been learning and playing with Photoshop in my spare time. I have been having a great time making backgrounds for this blog....Actually, I probably should work on the blog posts more than the backgrounds....

I thought I would share some of the backgrounds; you may or may not see them in the future....I have reduced them down in size so as to keep the blog happy........

I hope you enjoy! Remember you can click on the picture to see it a bit larger!

The Weekend

This is a fairly nice weekend so far..... We had a threat of rain, but it never materialized. We do have a chance of snow tonight, but we are hoping that doesn't materialize! It was a bit chilly to do yard work, so it was time to sort through the closets and drawers and swap sweaters for T-shirts. Of course with the precaution of keeping at least one or two sweaters, in case the weather decides not to cooperate. We shall see.....I will leave you with a few pictures of the mountains (our view from the backyard)......

On Blog Backgrounds

I hope it isn't driving you crazy that the backgrounds for my blogs keep changing. I am having a lot of fun creating backgrounds and learning new tricks in Photoshop. I love messing with the filters, brushes and pattern maker in Photoshop; it is such a fun versatile program. Also with the number of free 'digiscrap' art (Ribbons, bows, design elements, etc), I am having a great time. If you like to mess with digital scrapbooks, Starynight.com has some wonderful elements. I hope to 'graduate' to creating a lot of my own elements in the future. I have been messing about with creating preset brushes from old pics, which is a lot of fun!
Anyway, I try to leave the backgrounds up for at least a week....Sometimes I don't make it that long.....I love the color purple, but also get tired of looking at it! Hence, this recent 'change' to a blue lace background.....
Chat later!
Cheers

Pet Stories V

Well, I think this will be the last post on pets.....(unless I can think of more stories)....

Christmas:
Fritz and Shilo always had a 'stocking' hung up with ours at Christmas time. After a couple of years, Fritz figured out the stocking. When I hung them up, he would start checking them, to see when they got filled. He would literally guard the stockings. On Christmas morning, there he would be, right under his stocking waiting. We would put the stockings on the floor and he would empty his quickly. I don't think Shilo ever really caught on to the stockings, she would just follow Fritz's lead...Of course we would have to make sure Shilo got her stocking contents, and not Fritz!

The Dog House:
After we had gotten Shilo, Dave decided the dog's needed a 'Dog House'. We found a really nice, expensive, kit of redwood that had gingerbread trim; so one weekend Dave spent the day putting it together. It took a long time, but once it was finished, it looked great. Dave was proud of his work and the dogs seemed to have fun, going in and out of it....About a week later we were awakened about 3am by this loud banging noise in the backyard. We couldn't figure out what it was, so we got up and looked out the window.

There was Fritz with a section of the roof in his mouth, swinging it around and banging it into a tree. We yelled at him to stop it. In the morning we got up and went to see what exactly Fritz had done. Well, all of the trim was chewed into dozens of 2 and 3 inch pieces. The roof was off and only one wall was left standing. We couldn't believe our eyes. Dave was so angry, he said the dogs could just sleep on the ground. We cleaned up the wood pieces, and that was that....

Until my In-Laws came to visit. Dad, just couldn't stand that the dogs didn't have a dog house, so while we were at work one day, he went to the building center and bought supplies. He built a dog house out of cinder blocks, so that Fritz couldn't destroy it....That worked! But Dave was still pretty angry with Fritz....

Dog Toys and chewies:
The dogs had lots of toys and chewies. Their favorite were those rawhide squares that they could chew on for hours (or days). Fritz was terrible about chewies. He would sit close to Shilo and watch her chew on hers; while he sat on his..After a few minutes he would get up and run over to one of us. Jumping about and wagging that stump of a tail he had. All the while glancing at Shilo. Of course Shilo would run over to see what we were giving Fritz. As soon as Shilo came over, Fritz would dart back over to where Shilo had left her chewie, grab it and then lay down on his. This way he had 2 and Shilo had none.

Fritz would do this all the time. When we would take the dogs on a trip, we would always have a pillow and blanket for the dogs to lay on, and give them each a bone or chewie. It never failed, after a bit, Shilo could be seen pawing at Fritz. The first time we saw this, we told her to lie back down. She would for a minute or two, but then would be right back at bugging Fritz. We discovered that Fritz would watch for Shilo to leave her chewie alone, grab it and then lay on top of it, while chewing on his own chewie...Talk about 'children not playing together well'....Like I have said....Fritz was smart.......Shilo was loyal....

When we both lost our jobs one year; Dave got a job offer in Florida, but it was hard finding a place to rent that would accept pets. Dave finally found a place, but they would only allow one dog. We decided to keep Shilo because she wasn't as active as Fritz was. I refused to take Fritz to a shelter because he was a good dog and I was afraid he would be put down if they couldn't find someone to adopt him. I talked with our vet and made a deal. She would help me find a family for Fritz, or Fritz was going to be put down, in my arms.

Thankfully, the vet found a family on a ranch who had a handicapped daughter and 2 other German Shorthair Pointers. Fritz and the little girl took to each other immediately; Fritz and the other dogs got along well too. I called the family after about 2 weeks to make sure all was well with Fritz. They told me that they were very happy with Fritz, he was extremely protective of their daughter and felt she was safe with him around. I can only hope he had a long happy life.

Shilo was 13 when she had to be put to sleep. She lived a long happy life I think and I still miss her.