Time to Eat

I wasn't sure if I was going to post these pictures, but then I figured that this blog has lots of posts about nature and what is more natural than eating?

Desert Girl was getting hungry one day, and Desert Boy offered to feed her. I said sure, he could give it a try. Here are the results:

Needless to say, the "feeding" didn't last long!

It was very nice of Desert Boy to offer to help. But once was enough for him!

Unexpected Visitors

I was napping when I heard some heavy footsteps outside the bedroom window. I figured I was hearing cows, because they've been in the meadow below our house. They are heifers (first time mama cows), recently arrived with their new calves. I hoped that they were outside the fence, but when I peeked out the window, I saw one in the yard. And then another. And then I went to the kitchen and saw the view above out the window.

I grabbed the camera, because cows in the yard are usually a fun subject to photograph, and sure enough, this was no exception. This heifer went up to Henry's water dish for a drink.

Another heifer thought that might be a good idea.

I decided to open the door, and this is what I saw...

Hello, cow! It took her a moment to realize that she wasn't being invited in. Then she raced off the front steps and back into the driveway.

The heifers had come in through an open gate, but they didn't want to leave by it. So I opened another gate and gave them some room (and made sure Henry was with me). These heifers had come to visit because they were bored, but now they wanted to get back to their calves, so they didn't waste any time leaving through the gate and heading back to the meadow.

I enjoyed my extra bit of afternoon fresh air walking around the yard. Now I've just got to watch my step a bit more, because there are some extra fresh, juicy cowpies decorating the yard!

Future Olympian in Training

Watching the Olympics has our competitive juices flowing. Plus Desert Boy got a cute athletic outfit from his great-aunt and the weather has been better. Mix all that together, and we are raring to go outside! We offered Desert Boy the sled for his Olympic practice, but he declined. I guess he didn't think we had enough snow to make it work.

Or maybe he realized how Eurocentric the Olympics are. When thinking about this post, I was contemplating that we are watching the Winter Olympics, yet it is winter for only half the earth. For the other half, it's summer. Do the people in the southern hemisphere feel slighted? I think I would. What is Rio de Janeiro going to call the Summer Olympics when they hold them in winter? Hmm...deep thoughts...

I don't have too many deep thoughts on this blog, but I figured it would be totally okay if Desert Boy was practicing for the Summer Olympics in winter, because after all it is summer on half the earth right now. And the sport he's practicing for is biking. It's still not apparent what kind of biking he'll be doing, but for now he's working on being king of the training wheel bicycle competition.

On this particular day we forgot his helmet, but ever since then we've made sure he has it because he crashes so much. He's got a plethora of bumps and bruises to show off, and he proudly shares them as badges of his riding dedication. He's got strong little legs; the first day we took him out he rode nearly two miles. (He also walked a mile when he got stuck with Daddy in the South Meadow. Needless to say, he slept well that night!)

Here's a short video of Desert Boy riding on the pavement that's not too far from our house. Getting to the pavement is a little tricky, but he's getting better at it. I wonder what the kids who live in the northern part of the valley do--some of them have to go over an hour to get to pavement. Yet they still have a school with grades K-12; those kids certainly have a different story about growing up than most everyone else in the U.S.

In this second video, you can see some of the beautiful mountain scenery near us. It's always nice to see snow on the mountains--and have our roads down in the valley clear!

No Internet

We've been without Internet all week and it's driving me crazy!

Here's a quick photo of Desert Girl--she has been a real sweetie and has helped keep me sane!

Now I have to get back home and take care of her. Hopefully we'll get the Internet fixed in the next few days--I'm finding that I really crave it multiple times a day!!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day

We've been continuing to have some Internet issues, so I wasn't able to post this yesterday. But better late than never--Happy Valentine's Day! I was craving some iced cookies (thanks to Faberlicious mentioning them a couple days ago!). Desert Boy loves to help in the kitchen, so I mentally prepared for a huge mess and we began. He unwrapped the butter so we could melt it (since I never get it out hours ahead of time to soften), poured in the sugar and flour, and operated the mixer. Then he took charge of the cookie cutter. After we had baked a couple batches and had little bits of dough left over, I let him give it a try by himself.

He tried rolling out the dough and doing the cookie cutter all by himself.

The mess grew, but that was okay. It always does with cutout cookies!

Here's his end result. I managed not to laugh at the interesting shapes and tried to explain that we really didn't need to dump flour on the cookie sheet.

Next came the decorating phase. Having had nieces and nephews help me in the past I knew that the most important thing about decorating is putting limits on the decorations. So I poured the different sprinkles into the lids, and told Desert Boy he had to use his fingers to do the sprinkling.

He showed great restraint--much more than I anticipated. Usually one cookie ends up drenched in sprinkles and then there's nothing left for the rest. These cookies ended up tastefully decorated.

His attention span lasted to decorate all the cookies, another surprise. Although he did start eating the cinnamon hearts part way through the second cookie sheet.

And here's our end result! Yum, they looked and tasted delicious. I'm sad to report that they're nearly gone.