For those of you dealing with tons of snow... neener neener

The weather is supposed to get gross and Cassie is taking full advantage of it now, as you have seen lately. The little girl next door came over with her roller blades and they had a blast... I got to read a while too :)

Cassie is loving outside right now...

The weather here is absolutely gorgeous this week (well, it's supposed to get colder tomorrow and over the weekend). But Cassie has been taking full advantage of it, spending a lot of time outside. For her birthday, someone got her bubbles and another person got her a tether ball. She has had the BEST time with it!

The View From My Desk

NOTE: If you are here looking for the tree topper saga that one of my so-called friends told you about (LOL)... it's here

My desk looks out over a window. I have a gap area where the edge of the wall and the computer monitor don't meet from my point of view. It's great because I can see the kids on the swings while I work and there's also this beautiful old tree that I can see the edge of. Several times per day, I see squirrels running up and down the tree with acorns they find on the ground. I've tried to get pictures before, but if I try to sneak outside they catch me and disappear... so today, I grabbed the camera, zoomed in close and took pictures! Not too bad consider that window is dirty. I can NOT believe I got the one sitting on the branch. It was in a deep shadow. I have no idea how I did that, but gift horse, mouth, etc etc...

So, here's one of my little buddies...



You can see on the left the dark area there is actually the edge of the window frame, it was a tight fit!


He's a little out of focus, but at least you can see him up there... he perches there to store his loot and stare around waiting for a blade of grass to move so he can scurry away. Jittery little guys!


I'm not even going to complain that we had the A/C on earlier today. Nor will I complain that we even HAVE squirrels around in DECEMBER. It got cold tonight. For a while. Who knows how long. I'm moving back to Hawaii, I swear it! Watch me! Ummm... okay, maybe not. But geez!

Ark Building Time

I'm gonna start building an ark. No, really. For the past month, Austin has been over-run with rains. It won't stop. So, I can't send the kids out to play because it's either raining or just stopped raining and it's muddy. Or the grass is too high because you can't even freaking cut the grass.

We are just going to float away one of these days.

So, today, Tom got enough. It stopped raining and he got out the lawn mower... which of course, it kept choking up with wet grass... but he did it...



But man... look at the side of my yard? Well, in the picture above, you can see how long the branches are a little on that side - he has to get out there this weekend and cut it back, but look at the vegetation we have growing on the other side. DANG. It's never looked like that. I dunno how he's going to whack all of that down, good luck, honey. What the heck is going on here? Seriously, it HAS to stop raining. Soon. I'm going to lose it.

For the record, that stuff is coming from the neighbors yard. I don't care, we are whacking it down from our side at least. I'm paranoid about snakes.



To make matters even more irritating, my niece is here visiting. She's 8. Poor Marie - we told her we were going to take her to the pool and to the water park and all this fun stuff - so far, we've made it out to dinner a couple of times and had a friend over to play. We hope to do some indoor stuff this weekend - "they" say it might stop next week for a few days. UGH! Poor kid - she probably thinks she's visiting a rain forest.

Oh, and I'm now a bloglines addict. That's the best thing since sliced bread.

Raining and Harry

Tom and I finished our books within about 30 minutes of each other. I wrote a review on my other My Raves blog.

Seriously, what is up with the rain this year in Austin? This is ridiculous.

My niece, Marie, gets here on Tuesday for a 2 week visit! My kids are beside themselves with excitement - Marie is 8 and this is her first plane trip alone - and Little Miss Fearless is thrilled!

RAIN

I am so sick of the rain. It has been going every day for a month. Ugh!!

Going to the birds...

Jamie wanted me to take a picture to share here. Tom mowed the lawn yesterday and every time he does, we always get tons of birds and squirrels hunting through the newly shorted grass looking for whatever it is they look for... we even had a cardinal and two blue jays out there. I always point them out to the kids because they think they are so cool. My office is so great. I can see into the backyard where we have a bird feeder to attract them (those blue jays are MEAN birds!) and I can see the kids playing. It's fun for me to watch as soon as the kids come in, the birds start flocking around. I guess because of all the rain we've had the past 3 weeks, they were hunting around hard for food.

Anyway... this is a picture of the cardinal (I assume these are cardinals - I had a pan on the bird feeder to attract them but I had to take it off because it was just enticing the pigeons and they were eating the bird seed as fast as we could replace it - they are like little vultures).

Bike Riding Time Again!

It finally warmed up nicely last week ---- soooooo ---- it's bike riding time again!

Happy 35th Birthday, Tom!

Tom turned 35 yesterday and we had a small party with some friends. Happy Birthday, Tom! A few pics are below.



Oh, and while I'm dumping pictures... this picture still doesn't show how LONG the icicles got from the roof... it was wild, but you'll get a better idea...

Brrr... it's COLD out there...

My heater is doing overtime. It's FREEZING here! We've had a nasty ice storm come through. It started late Sunday and looks like it will continue through Wednesday night. The entire world has shut down out here. No school (seriously, I love my kids, but Jamie really needs to get back to school before I go completely insane!) at all this week so far - we are hopeful for Thursday, but I'm betting it will be a late start day.

Anyway, we got a little bit of snow, LOTS of sleet and LOTS of ice... enjoy the pics!