Sunday evening...

I just came back from a one mile walk on a local road. Yesterday I walked a mile on the trail, and the day before two miles! What a streak!

I've been experiencing some symptoms of acid reflux, again. It hasn't bothered me for quite some time. Now it's time to watch my diet, exercise and lose weight! 

The girls decided to build a fort. No nails, just prop boards up against a tree. I told them they would be squished if the boards slipped. A few moments later they collapsed. Luckily nobody was under them. Adam told them NOT to rebuild it. He will build them a fort later. :)

Today the girls were out with binoculars and nature guides identifying birds and anything they could find. Even making a nature journal. Their own idea!

 A couple of days ago Micah, myself, all the kids and three dogs went for a walk. (That was the two mile walk on the trail.) Quite an experience! The kids did well. The dogs got some leash training. And we got quite a bit of exercise. We pushed Thatcher in a double stroller and Adele joined him for part of the trip. Sometimes I walked a dog, and for a short while I pushed the stroller. It's quite a production just getting everyone ready!

You guys may think I've lost it when you see all the pics posted below, but I realized I've been skipping posting most of what I've been doing. Some of these may be repeats, but I'm much too lazy to go back over my old posts, ha ha. Actually, I went back to January and I don't think these were posted. I've been avoiding pics of collage, but now...HERE THEY ARE. (Easy enough to scroll on past them, right?) I may put a description if I can remember what they were for. If not, at least I have a visual record of what I made.

We had a swap where we made cards with a door in them.

 These are from the Alphabetical Adventure Zentangle swap. The tangle pattern names had to begin with a certain letter.

 Some inchies I will give away when someone asks for them.

 And some I gave away a long time ago...

This swap was in honor of bees. Save a Bee or something like that. I carved a bumble bee stamp for the occasion. :)

 These were for a "trash" challenge. The host sent us an envelope with some odds and ends and we were to use one of her items in each of our cards and create a theme around it. I made two more, but didn't find the photo.

                     
For this swap we made teacups that can stack.

Well, some teacups are farther down. The photos loaded all out of order and Blogger deleted the photos from the upload box, so to correct the problem I'd probably have to start from scratch uploading from my memory card. Nope. So it's a smorgasbord! :)
I'll just put captions on each one.

An open theme swap. Anything goes!

Open theme like above.

Collage houses swap.

Same as above.

In the style of a famous artist swap.

Stacking teacup swap.

Ditto.

More "in the style of a famous artist". 

Altered Playing Cards (APC) Female with Text theme.

Another (the last!) stacking teacup.

The Punny Animal swap.

Postage Stamp ATC swap-Place or Scenery stamp

Same as above.

APC-Female with Text theme. (We're doing a whole deck of these.)

Same as above.

I think this was an open theme swap.

APC swap-Female with Text theme

Hallelujah! You reached the end! Thanks for hanging in there!
With that I will close for now. I'm keeping an eye on all you bloggers out there. Take care of yourselves!
Shalom!

Bandit and Chili...

The dog herd next door is increasing! Chili, the red heeler, joined the family yesterday. Chili is Hazel's new puppy. Bandit is Audrey's and he's a blue heeler. They aren't related. The girls have their hands full taking the puppies outside and cleaning up accidents, but they're loving it! These boys will be their 4-H projects, following in their mom's footsteps. Not sure how 4-H will go this year since the clubs can't get together to practice right now. And yes, it was only about 45 degrees with a stiff breeze, so the girls are dressed warmly. It's Minnesota...

Bandit (left) and Chili (right). 

I notice some photos are missing from my last post. I wonder what that's about? Or will it correct itself?

And now random stuff! As I've mentioned in the past, my pictures appear scattered all through my saved photos. So, I'll just post them as I come across them.

Here are a couple of ATCs made for a swap called Punny Animals. Guess why! :)

 Then we had some very interesting weather. These were all taken within a few minutes. The clouds were coming and going, racing across the sky. We had a little rain here and there and then a rainbow.

 They're ba-ack! The neighbor's guinea hens. I heard them chattering, cackling and YELLING at each other yesterday and grabbed my camera. They didn't get very close. This is their first visit this year.

 Micah's been thinking it would be fun to have some of her own, but I think we have the best of both worlds. They come over and entertain us; then they go back home where someone else is responsible for keeping them alive through the winter! I think I've had my fill of that part!  But chickens might still be on the agenda. (Micah's.)

A little C.S. Lewis from my daily readings in The Business of Heaven. 

We've been having weekly Zoom get-togethers (the 7 kids and I), which have been fun. None today. But it is nice to know we can do this since we're separated by so many miles. Family reunions are few and far between.

SO, I continue on my routine of reading, computer time, a little walking (getting better), art and a movie now and then. There's the occasional trip to Walmart, the dump and to pick up my mail. Pretty normal for me.

Hope you're all doing well. I'll be checking out your blogs!

Love and shalom to all!

Introducing Paris!

A couple of you requested photos of the new pony. Here she is in all her shaggy winter hair glory!

 Micah and I voted for the name Dixie, in honor of my aunt with the cute southern name. We got outvoted. It had to be unanimous, and the winner was...Paris. A little ostentatious for my taste, but then she isn't my pony! :) She's still in quarantine in her pen, so we have a lot of whinnying going on. She seems to be a fairly calm pony and yet with enough spirit that she should work for the kids to do some barrel racing and other games in 4-H on her. That's down the road.

 Here is my reading for this morning from Streams in the Desert. So me! I suppose we can all relate to this.

 The kids got new bikes and Hazel got some riding lessons from Dad, Adam. This was a couple of days ago.

I love this picture with Sully on his pee wee balance bike!

And this was day two! She soloed pretty quickly. Big sis, Audrey, did have to pick her up and brush her off a few times before she got the hang of it. :)

 Audrey learned to ride last summer. Our bumpy driveway isn't the easiest place to learn, but they get lots of practice avoiding holes and mudpuddles!

 I just got this in the mail. Still deciding if I want to try it. I thought getting some info first would be a good idea before investing in a dehydrator.

 My latest 5x7 canvas. This month's swap was cancelled because we weren't sure how the mails would be effected by all the hooplah in the world. But I'll send this to someone next month.

 This was my model for the canvas. It's a stamp!

Micah and I (and the crew) are heading to town to do errands. You folks have a nice day! It's 50 and beautiful here. We may take a walk on the trail.

God bless and shalom!