Down By The River

We have lived a mile from the Arkansas River for almost 13 years. Recently we decided to check it out and it's been fun. Now we go down there every night that the weather permits. We're enjoying it while we still have the daylight hours.

The kids have a great time, exploring the shore (here Lydia found a pebble)...

climbing up and down the bank...

sometimes with a little help...

and just enjoying the view.

Happy Birthday Lydia!

Lydia turned four last month. After the traditional Chick-Fil-A dinner, we came home for cake.

I made the mistake of asking Lydia (about 6 weeks prior) what kind of cake she wanted. This was a mistake because I really had something in mind to make. It's fun for me to make cute girl cakes (Ty has always requested a chocolate cake with chocolate icing, not much there for me to be creative with).

Well, Lydia has things in mind, too. She requested a cinnamon roll cake. I have no idea what a cinnamon roll cake is, but I had a feeling if I didn't get it right, she wouldn't be happy. I tried to deter her with pictures of cute cakes online, but she said she could have those cakes on other birthdays. This year she wanted a cinnamon roll cake.

So I made a cinnamon coffee cake (in a round pan to be reminiscent of a cinnamon roll), drizzled it with white icing and voila!--a cinnamon roll cake. She was happy and it was delicious.

Unwrapping her present...A fish...

She has named him Fishy and she loves to feed him every day.

Nature Fun

I've really been enjoying my backyard lately. My zinnias finally bloomed (they got a late start) and are attracting butterflies.

I planted some Italian parsley, specifically to attract Swallowtail butterflies. So I was excited to finally see a baby swallowtail caterpillar on it a couple days ago. I captured this picture today. He may look big, but he's only about as long as the first digit of my index finger.

A friend had given us two of this same kind of caterpillar last year. We put them in a mason jar with air holes in the lid. I fed them parsley and then they made chrysalises. But the sad thing was that they never broke out. It was anti-climatic to say the least. I had built it up all summer to the kids, just to say, "oh well, I guess we won't get to see butterflies being born."

A friend told me that she had the same thing happen to her. They put the chrysalis in a shadow box to save. Then, months later, her son was freaking out over a bug crawling down the hall. It was the butterfly! For some reason, perhaps the weather, it took much longer to break out.

So with this in mind, I kept our chrysalises in the jar, on the windowsill, all winter. I was hoping that a warm spring day would bring them out. But no, they still didn't break out. May passed, then June, and I figured I should just throw them out. But I'm a procrastinator and didn't.

One morning, a couple weeks ago, I was doing my dishes and caught sight of some huge black bug out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and realized it was one of our butterflies! We released it in the backyard. Then a couple days later, the other one broke out. They stayed in that jar, in their chrysalises, for about a year! Now, I call that a miracle!

Here is a picture of one in the jar, just before we released it.

And here he is, on the parsley.

Moses Supposes

I Love Zinnias!

I love my Zinnias. I found this butterfly enjoying them, this morning.

Ready for a Change

Ty has worn his hair long for about 4 years.

He decided he wanted to try it short.

Checkout the transformation:

Oklahoma Wildlife

Here in Oklahoma we have lots of critters.  I'm just not used to that.  I found these little guys, by the hundreds, all along my back fence.

Turns out they are harmless, but still creepy.

Then, about a month ago, Lydia spotted this guy, out her bedroom window...
So I stepped out to take a few pictures, while he munched on a breakfast of frog.
I really was trying to find out if he was poisonous.  This snake was 3 to 4 feet long and I didn't think I could successfully kill it, so I wanted to assure myself that it was harmless.  Apparently the head shape will tell you--skinny being non-poisonous, and triangular being poisonous.  This one's head seems skinny.  But thankfully, 30 minutes later, the lawn care guys came to spray and told me it was non-poisonous for sure.

Well, this morning I went out to do what I do every morning, water my garden.  My cucumber vines are climbing a jute trellis that I made, right outside my back door, so I usually check on them first.  Then I will take a couple steps to the left to turn on the hose.  So I checked out my cucumbers and turned to go toward the hose and there in front of me was a 4 foot black snake, slithering along the house.  I freaked out and ran inside.  Shane came out back and we looked around, but the snake was gone.  I just thought he surely would be on the side of the house, but he was gone, that fast.  Oh, well, I got a look at his head and it was skinny, so I felt fine that he was non-poisonous.

Later in the afternoon I decided to lay out and get a little sun.  Ever since Lydia spotted her snake, I really try to watch my step.  I was scanning the whole yard while setting up my lawn chair.  I laid there for a couple minutes and then I just felt creepy, like the snake could at any moment be coming up behind me.  I opened my eyes and looked to the left.  Low and behold, the same black snack from that morning was flying across my lawn, chasing a frog!  (Sorry, I couldn't get a picture of that.)  I've never seen a snake move that fast.  I did not know that snakes liked to eat frogs, but I guess they do.  Here I see a frog, hopping as fast and far as he can, and this snake flying after him.  So, this time, I ran inside without screaming, so as not to scare it off.  He chased that frog all over the yard.

I came and got Shane.  We decided it was best to kill it, even though it's not poisonous, I just can't relax in my back yard, knowing it's roaming around.  So Shane cornered it by the fence and got it with his pellet gun.

Ty wanted to touch it, after it was dead and was really fascinated, so here he is holding it up...
And, here's another.  As you can see, it's about as long as him and he's over 4 feet tall!

I hope to never see another one of these again, but I'm sure I will.  (These weren't my first sightings, my first was a couple summers ago.  Perhaps I'll post a picture of that one one day, he came right up to my kitchen window and looked in at me, scrubbing dishes--he was over 6 feet long!)