My Bud and Little Girls

My buddy Jimmie and my two girls. You will not see many pictures of him on FB or here as he does not like his picture being taken. So out of respect for that I asked his permission to publish this one and he granted it. If you ever want to buy a used car and he has one for sale he is the person to buy it from. He is way beyond normal for keeping good car of his cars. He will tell you what is wrong if there is anything wrong. At any rate Val and I thought this shot was just too cool.

After Jimmie left and Ricki was in bed Lucy settled down with me in the man cave.

A sweet Blessing Sent 2012 Christmas Season

Every year for nearly the last 20 years we have been going to what we call Christmas House Hopping until this year. A few people cook up a bunch of their favor goodies, heavily decorate their homes and on an hourly basis we go from house to house to enjoy each other’s companionship. At the last house we party until late into the evening.

I must have pulled a muscle or bruised a rib as I had a very sharp pain in my side that I could not tell what the problem was. It was located in an area that it could have been any number of key organs. The pain was severe enough that I did not set the alarm thinking I might end up needing to call the paramedics at some point in the middle of the night. It hurt to breath, sit, and stand, just about anything. So we had to opt out of the annual house hopping party.

So while we were at home the dogs started barking and Val noticed a bunch of flash lights around the front of the house. I did not grab my gun, but I did have quick access to it if needed as this was highly unusual. When I peeked out through one of the small windows I noticed the people did not have police uniforms on but had Christmas like garb. Once opening the door, I think I might have surprised them a bit as they had not yet knocked or ring the doorbell that we remember. What we found was some very harmonious Christmas Carolers which while in pain was very uplifting. They were from a local church and did not try to convert us or anything like that. Here are a couple of shots.

2012 Christmas the house is getting ready

The house is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We went over a picked up our tree on Saturday and decorated it on Sunday.

Our entertainment center ready for Christmas. Val does such a good job at decorating. As you can see I was messing with flash settings and shutter speeds.

The fire place.

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Chili Season October 2012

I love Chili season. Nothing like a cool day, open fire, and a dutch oven full of home made Chili. While writing this I am even thinking to do this next weekend. It is not January, but next weekend the weather looks like it might get into the 60's. I love Texas. Now first to round up the meet for the Chili.

Now get the fire started and a good hot bed of ambers.

Now start browning the meat, keep dog around incase you run short on meat.

Dog lucky, got enough meet.

Keeping dogs around incase more meat is needed. They never seem to be to far from kitchen when I cook outside.

Good stuff.. It was great eating.

Euless Weather 8/25/11

I know this is not much of a big deal for those of you who have a hurricane on the way up the East Coast, and those of you who have been getting a great deal of heavy rain in the North Central, and for those of you in the North East who have rarely so far this year made it out of the 70's, but for us down here in Euless Texas this is a huge deal. I mostly post this just for my own records.

- We have had one day below 100+ in 60 days (that was two weeks ago).
- One day with some rain in the last 60+ days and it did not last long.
- Last night due to a storm in Dallas County we did get some gusts of wind (you will see a shot of a limb down from one of my trees, and temps dropped to under 90 before 845 PM. We had three visitors to my deck last night as we all wanted to rejoice in the cool temps of 86+.
- This morning I was awaken by thunder. We only got .05 inches of rain or less but it was fantastic. We did not get above 79 until about 9:30 AM on the deck about 9:10 AM near house. This is a 60+ day first temps were so low.
- They are predicting 107 degrees today, but I kind of question that. We will need some super heating and man with the humidity at 70% right now, it will really feel very hot. I hope the clouds are more then less.

Tree limb shots below.

Rat Snake in Yard

Here are a few shots of a young Rat Snake I found in my back yard. We have a 5 foot guy running around someplace as I found him last fall in my back sun room going after a mouse that was becoming a pain. The mouse either was dinner or left the room after that day. Anyway maybe this guy is an off spring.

Peacock in Back Yard - August 7 2011

I let my dog out this morning while I was sitting in the rocker and I heard her barking in one of her "gee I found a snake or other unknown creature bark". As I went over to investigate she kept backing up very unsure of herself so I gave what ever it was a wide berth as I rounded the barn. And sure enough was a fairly large male peacock. Once he saw me he flew to the top of our mini barn.







I put Rickie (the dog) in the house so the bird flew back to the ground. Since he spent a lot of time in my back yard I then let the dog out again. When Rickie approached him the kind of walked around a small tree kind of like a dance. Unfortunately with the vegetation I have in my back yard getting a picture was not easy of the both of them.



After a short time he had enough of Rickie and went back up to the barn roof.





He spent quite a bit of time up there eating the leaves off the trees hitting the roof.



The squires did not think much of him being in the area. They the squires will play with my dogs but when it comes to large birds they get nervous. This guy here came by to try to get some food. But his tail was doing that warning flip and the rest of the squires were barking.






After awhile he flew back down to the ground and started walking around and getting quite unafraid, I was within 4 feet of him at one point, but then the dang cat from down the street came along and so long peacock. He flew off and so far I have not seen him since. But tomorrow is another day.







Pat