The past few weeks, the flowers have really begun to grow. It’s been so dry that I’ve been watering them every morning and using Sevin Dust to keep little critters from munching on the leaves. It looks like my work is paying off. Look what I found this morning -

I’m excited to see these. In fact I may plant more next year in the yard since they are really attractive. Guess I can grow things after all.

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted here. It just seems I miss one day and then it’s a month before I post again!

Here is a photo of some paint on Raegan’s palette. She loves to paint and will keep her entertained for hours.

She’s so adorable. Maybe this is the beginning of actually letting me fix her hair.

I’m trying to sort through a bunch of old files on my laptop and came across the real beach photos from back in February. In a week we will be back at this real beach but this time it will be warm enough to get in the water.

Rae was ready to strip down and dive in. However, it was way too cold for that. She did enjoy being at the water’s edge. Oddly enough she didn’t seem too impressed by the miles of sand. Toddlers. You never know what will impress them.

Tonight the moon looked very photogenic, so I grabbed my tripod and headed outside. This is my favorite photo. The camera was set on ‘M’ and I had to manually focus. Tonight wasn’t a full moon like it looks in the picture but a crescent(?) moon. The shutter stayed open for a good 45 seconds. Usually I just wind up with a bunch of blur when trying to photograph the moon.The tripod really does help. Now to get a handle on settings and I should have some better pictures of the moon.

Raegan has her first pet. His name is Smokie. We told Raegan we would get her a hamster after our cat caught a baby bunny and it died. Rae wanted to keep the bunny which we couldn’t have done anyway since it was wild. But a hamster would make a better pet for her. She is really loving having a hamster. In fact we are thinking about getting a second one. They’re such a bargain at the pet store and Smokie has been a lot of fun. We will probably need a second cage though to make sure they get used to each other.

Last year we bought some caterpillars that turned into Painted Lady butterflies. When we released them, we didn’t see them again. I had hoped that they would hang around some of our butterfly flowers but no they just seemed to disappear.

The above picture I took today and it looks like a Painted Lady. So maybe they didn’t fly very far after all. It’s cool to think this could be some of their offspring. This one kept flapping his wings a lot. I remember that they did this for 24 or so hours after coming out of the cocoon to get the blood flowing to their wings.

Anyway it would be pretty cool that if this painted lady was a decedent of those caterpillars from last year.

Spring is here and so are the chicks. My dad built a chicken house a few months back. We just had to wait until now for them to hatch. Raegan really likes them - which was the whole reason for getting them. We had chickens when I was Raegan’s age and I loved gathering the eggs.

My dad bought the chicks from a local farmer. When I told Rae that Papaw was going to get some chickens, she said “yummy!” Now after seeing the chicks, I think eating them is the last thing on her mind.