For Nanny

Nanny,

I love you and want you to know that everything is being taken care of up here.  Here are a few pictures of our day today.  I want you to focus your energy on what needs to be done there and know that you can be at peace with how things are going up here.

The girls did not want to eat breakfast in the kitchen... Grandma sits in the living room and they wanted to eat with Grandma.  So their little table got moved semi-permanently to the living room so they and Grandma can eat all their meals together.  (Although, when we had spaghetti with red sauce tonight we ate outside instead.  It seemed a little easier on the white carpet!)

Here's Landry driving Grandma around in the Mule this evening.  To be honest, I'm not comfortable with any of the three of them behind that wheel!  

 Avery and Grandma hit it off with their common love of fishing.

Grandma's got something!  Wanna see what it was?

Look closely... it was so big Clay had to help reel it in!

Yup, it's a turtle!  Believe it or not, she caught another turtle before the night was over.  I'm not sure anyone has ever caught a turtle fishing at this pond and here she goes catching two in one night.  I'm not sure what her secret was.

Here Avery and Grandma are showing off Avery's bass that she caught.

I mean, really... who can say they went fishing with their great-great-granddaughter?  That is one impressive stat if you ask me.

Landry got in on the fishing action too.  Her technique was definitely nontraditional, but...

She caught the biggest bass of the night!

Avery showing off another catch to Grandma.

We ended this evening with a milkshake... just so you know, she did not go to bed hungry tonight.  I can't believe she ate the whole thing.  Calcium levels should be good for a while. :)

I love you and hope this post brings a little bit of light to your day.

Love,

Maurine

Still searching...

I just wanted you to know to keep praying for my grandfather's safe return.  Papaw is still missing and, with each hour that goes by, emotions run a little higher and worries get a little stronger.  Pray for peace for my Nanny and strength and wisdom for everyone searching.  I will update if anything at all changes.

Prayers and a shot in the dark

This is my grandfather.  His name is Richard Parker (he's Papaw to me, it looks funny to write out his actual name) and he left his house in Aquilla, TX (by Lake Whitney) and has been missing since Saturday evening.  He has a lot of trouble remembering things and gets confused very easily (probably the early stages of Alzheimer's) and we don't know that he could find his way back if he wanted to.  He is diabetic and has high blood pressure so the longer he is gone, the more medically compromised he is as well.  

This is the description that is going out from the authorities... 

He was driving a 2004 Dodge extended cab short bed pick up truck with a bed cover with a Texas License Plate number 60V-NX2.
Parker is 6-feet, 2-inches tall and weights around 210 pounds. He was last seen wearing a short sleeve plaid shirt, dark colored blue jeans with tennis shoes and metal framed glasses.

He grew up in Ft. Worth and lived there for most of his life so there's a chance he could have traveled back to a familiar place like that and I know a lot of people who read this are from around there.  At this point, it couldn't hurt to have his picture and description in one more place so this is my shot in the dark.


BUT, even in you live far off, please pray!  Pray that he is safe and remains safe; pray that we find him soon; pray for my Nanny, my mom and her siblings for strength and wisdom and peace while the search continues.


Thank you.

Does it make me a great mom or a horrible mom?

Okay, so the question is, am a a great mom for allowing my girls to handle live fish and "fallen asleep" fish all day long or does that make me a horrible mom?  I guess it depends on your perspective.  :) Yesterday after the morning rains we were out working in the yard and Clay looked over at the spillway and found 12 fish that were stranded and trying to swim back upstream to the pond.  Had we let them be, nature's course would have been to sacrifice them as an easy meal for the blue heron that is never far away... We saved them... and gave them to Avery and Landry instead.

These fish were the most pampered, well-fed, and cared for fish you have ever met.  Avery spent every waking moment of the rest of her day caring for her new baby pets.  She fed them earthworms and grubworms, housed them, moved them, hugged them and loved on them.  Here she is with the "momma" and a "baby".

Here's her favorite.  All the assorted buckets below served as "houses".  She moved the fish constantly from one bucket to another so they could all play with each other.  Landry definitely got in on the action and Nolan even stopped by to watch the fun.

Roselyn came over for a while that evening to show Avery her find of the day, a good-sized red-earred slider.  If you look close you can see Avery is trying to get the turtle to eat one of the fish that "fell asleep".

Here they are talking about their strategy for getting the turtle to come out of its shell.  Roselyn's former strategy of reaching in with her finger and poking it really hard had not been successful and resulted in a small chunk of skin being bitten off her finger. 

The girls were so distracted all day by the fish and turtle that Clay and I got tons of work done in the yard.  I love spring!

More fun at the farm

A few of you asked about uploading photos with a Mac from iPhoto to Blogger.  Amber suggested emailing the pictures to my blogger email, which can be setup in by going to Settings, then Email & Mobile.  After you set that up, go to iPhoto and choose your pictures and select the Email option in the lower right-hand corner.  The only trick is, if you use your Mail application, you need to go the top toolbar and choose Mail, Preferences, and under Composing select your Message Format to be Plain Text instead of Rich Text format.  The pictures won't email correctly in Rich Text format.  And that's it.  It's easy blogging from there.

So in celebration, here's another blog from yours truly.  Cousins Kellan, Parker, and Kase came in from South America to play a month or so ago(well, they were really here for their aunt's wedding, but my kids don't know that).  We all met up at the farm and let me tell you, the rain didn't rain on our parade a bit.

Mom made make-shift raincoats for all the kids so they could enjoy the 4-wheelers even in the rain.

Waiting patiently for the adults to get ready to go back outside after the kids' naps.

Avery and Parker off to hunt down a skunk we had seen walking close to the house.  I overheard Avery telling Landry and Parker, "Now, I'm gonna shoot that skunk and if you get too close I'll probably have to shoot you."  ... Hmm...

Playing in the puddles

Then we found the BIG mud

It was obviously a hit

Throwing rocks in the creek... again.  There is something that is just addictive about it.

Checking on the goldfish in the tank

Blowing bubbles

Avery and Landry were so excited and felt very big to get to hold their new cousin, Kase for the first time.  

Landry's 2nd birthday

And a GIGANTIC THANK YOU goes out to Amber for clueing me in to making blogging easier on a Mac.  With a little troubleshooting, this process just got a lot quicker.  YAY!

Landry is officially 2 years old now and we went down to the farm to celebrate.  Yes, this is what we did last year and yes, it's a little selfish because I love the farm in the spring... but did she have a great time?  Absolutely.  So I guess the whole selfish thing doesn't matter that much.  The guys also got a good bit of turkey hunting in.  Every man that walked out to hunt came back with a bird... not bad.

Here's the first unlucky tom.

The birthday girl

Throwing rocks in the creek is one of my girls favorite things to do here.  It was definitely used as a bribe when I was trying to get them to cooperate for pictures in the wildflowers.

I love that sweet little back.

Picking bluebonnets

I would love to say that my girls are super compliant picture takers.  The reality is though that their Daddy was right behind me for the pictures making slightly obscene noises... yes, my little ladies think tooting is hilarious.  Can you blame them?

My dad has worked hard maintaining this property and it shows.  I haven't ever seen a place with so many wildflowers.

Yay for pictures!

This is Avery's grown-up look that she has been sporting quite a lot lately.  She'll use it when she's informing me that the babies in her tummy (she apparently has 2) don't want fruit or carrots for a snack, but that they would like something with sugar in it.  

Playing with Daddy

The day of Landry's party was very rainy, but we got just enough of a break to go out and play a little.  Here's Ro and Avery tromping through the flowers.

Landry's Buzzy Bee birthday... I don't know why she requested it, but she did so that's what she got.

She was very serious about the unwrapping of her presents.  This expression was pretty common during gift time.  Clay said it was because I wrapped the presents with too much tape... what does he know?  He wrapped his 4-year old nephew's birthday gift last month with a garbage bag and duct tape.

Blowing out the candles with a little bit of help from Daddy and big sister.

So pleased that she blew her candles out all by herself.

Here are the girls checking out the 2nd batch of turkeys.  These were hunted in the rain so they had to be hung to dry out.  Clint and Clay are dedicated hunters, and I guess it paid off.

Loving the tire swing!

And I guess I could add in a family picture.  Don't mind the 7 month pregnant belly.