For Amy and Katie

GROUND SQUIRREL

Ground Squirrels live all over the world. The American red squirrel lives in evergreen forests in North and Central America. Arctic squirrels live on the tundra. Mohave ground squirrels live in the Mojave Desert of California. These are only a few of the kinds of ground squirrels there are in the world.
Ground squirrels and tree squirrels are different. You can tell the difference this way. Ground squirrels will run to their burrow in the ground if they are scared. Tree squirrels will climb a tree or high building.
They are about 7-8 inches long and weigh about 8-14 ounces. They most often make their home in the northern plains of North America.

Happiness

Happiness is........



Realizing that your hair WILL grow again.
And playing outside with your trucks.......



Clean sheets drying on the clothesline....




A fresh, clean blankie, dried by the rays of the sun....




Sitting on a lawn chair, warming your pale winter skin in the sunshine...



Riding your tricycle barefoot....



Knowing that spring is here to stay:

NO! MINE!

Right now, as I type this, my two boys are fighting over a sock.

Steve-o's sock. From yesterday.
It's laying on the floor in the living room - dirty, smelly, stretched out.
Apparently, from what I understand from AJ's crying and yelling, Owen stole it from AJ, who had it first.

AJ (crying): It's my sock! Mine! Wah-ha-ha!
Owen (taunting): ungh-uh! Mine.
AJ: hysterical crying
Me: What the heck is going on out here??
AJ (crying): It my sock!
Me (rolling eyes): You guys are weird. ( I turn and come to the computer)

The fighting continues for a few minutes, but I think AJ won, because he just came in here, nasty sock in hand, took a swig of my coffee and left.

Never a dull moment.

Catch ya in a few

We're out for the weekend to visit some friends in north Georgia, so if you happen to call our house 18 times this weekend (dad) that's why we're not answering.

Have a great weekend!

Horses, Ostriches, and a Couple Zebra

I was feeling in the mood to take some horse photos, so I called upon Casey and his endless connections to hook me up with some equine subjects. Off to the Fowler farm we headed (as in Jim Fowler, owner of Parks at Chehaw, who happens to be Casey's uncle).

I love the Fowler farm. It's one of my favorite places to do senior sessions, engagement sessions, anytime anywhere sessions. There is a plethora of scenic places to photograph - including old barns, abandoned shacks, rusty cars from the 1950's, fences, bamboo forests, dirt paths, open meadows.....it's a photographer's dream property.
Anyway, they also have several horses so out we went to snap a few pictures. Unfortunately, when we arrived I had a complete creative brain fart and was feeling totally uninspired. Thus follows my rather boring pictures of some horses:

I can't remember the name of this little beauty, but they were working her when we arrived. She's the youngest of the group I think, only 2 years old, and she was fun.



This shot makes me laugh every time I look at it. She was tied to the hitching post here to get groomed after her workout and she was VERY curious about my camera. When I knelt down in front of her though, she wasn't so sure about what I was doing.




This is Casper, who was a very poor model. He had quite a knack for stepping into the perfect golden lighting, and promptly turning his back on me so that I would have a glorious shot of his massive behind. Or, he would be holding beautifully still and looking perfectly regal, and when I would kneel down to take his picture, he would saunter over to stick his velvety nose right on my lens and nudge me around looking for treats.
I even sent Casey over to have a word with him, but he was having none of it.
Note to self: Next time, bring bribes for Casper.








Feeling a little bored and quite uninspired, I was ready to leave the horses so we decided to drive over the wild animal pasture and see if we could get anything over there. Now, the zebras apparently were under the impression that I was a tiger lurking in the Serengeti about to surprise attack them at any moment, so they promptly trotted away at my approach.
Ironically enough, the freaking ostriches were rather interested in us and came right over. This gave me a few heart palpitations, seeing as I have this thing with birds. Specifically, I hate them and consider them to be evil tools of world destruction used by Satan himself.
Here you see a giant male ostrich approaching with purposeful strides on his giant dinosaur-like feet to see what we were all about. What you DON"T see, is Casey behind me whispering, "Oh sweet Mother of Mary, he's coming this way" as he scrambles back towards the car. Seems that I'm not the only one who has a bit of "thing" for fowl. In the name of photography, I took a deep breath and held my ground. You can't let them smell your fear, you know.

Or something like that.


He finds me to be rather uneventful and decides to wander off to do better things.
Like twist his snakey neck around to pick feathers off his butt, and leave a giant ostrich poop about 25 yards further on.





But his girlfriend finds us to be EXTREMELY interesting and walks right up.
Like within 2 feet of me.
Like close enough that she could have stuck her neck out and pecked my eyes out.
Or at least one eye, since the other one was behind the camera lens.
I told Casey to watch out for the male, who I was certain was planning an ambush from the side while his girlfriend distracted us and I had my face behind the camera.



Here she is pondering how tasty my flesh might be. I think she's preparing to tear the hair off my scalp as an appetizer.
Ostriches are carnivores, you know.



Here she concedes that it would be a dang shame to peck me to death because my beautiful 70-200mm lens would crash to the ground and probably break. And even this stupid bird knows THAT would be a travesty.


One more shot --- of the zebras, who have been watching the human-ostrich interaction with trepidation. I think they were just glad to have the ostriches off their backs. I think the ostrich hunt the zebras when no one is watching.



Cue Casey, who would not stop singing "The Circle of Life" as I took my last few shots.

FYI

Cooked broccoli smells horrible after it's been in the fridge for 2 weeks.

The Haircut

AJ's hair has been getting a little out of control. It's long, it's wispy and fine. We've never taken him to have it cut by a professional. Ever.
He HATES to have his hair cut, so usually haircuts for AJ usually consist of me pinning him in a chair while I attempt to trim his hair out of his eyes and off his ears without severely wounding him or drawing more than a little blood. There's crying, there's wiggling, there's whining. And then there's AJ - who's even worse.
Well, his hair has progressively gotten more choppy, more uneven, and more mullet-like as the months go by so yesterday I decided to take him to someone who actually knows what they're doing and let them have a go at it. I promised AJ ice cream if he would sit relatively still and let them cut his hair. He was all about the ice cream....the sitting still part was NOT gonna happen.
I plop him down in the stylist's chair and she tried to amuse him by pumping his chair up and down.
"Isn't that fun?" she crooned.
AJ shakes his head no.
"Here. You wanna wear my batman cape?" she asks as she spreads it over his lap.
"NO!" AJ says.
She fastens it anyway but he keeps flapping it up and down like a parachute.
"How much do you want cut off?" She asks me.
In the next 3 minutes I tell her what I want, these sentences included:
"Something a little shorter for summertime, since it's starting to get warmer outside"
"But NOT a buzz-cut"
"A little shorter in the back, longer in the front"
"I don't want it to look like a military cut"
"It needs to be long enough that I can put some stuff in it and spike it up a little or something"

Is that difficult? Does it sound hard? I didn't think so. I thought it was pretty clear.
To be honest, I had something like this in mind: yes, McCauley Caulkin in his younger, cuter years. Blond, spiky, adorable, right? But I didn't want to actually SAY "make my kid look like McCauley Caulkin, because well....that's kinda weird. And she could've made him look like freaky-deaky greasy punck McCauley Caulkin, and that was so NOT what I was going for.

Anyway, she says she's going to use the biggest attachment on the clippers, which I think is no problem, because when I cut AJ's hair I use that one too. The only difference is, that I use clippers ONLY on the back part of his hair, and then I scissor-cut the top, so it's a little longer. This is what I'm expecting her to do, but instead, she turns the clippers on and runs those blasted clippers over his ENTIRE head.
I reeled back in surprise, my mouth fell open. I was about to scream at her for ruining my beautiful child's hair and jump on her back like a banshee and shave her own head bald with her own dang clippers, but I figured it was too late now, what could I do??
She continued until all his gorgeous blond locks were all over the floor. I sat in shocked silence while Owen was beside me giggling, "AJ's get his hair cut. It's all ova the floor"
By this point AJ is crying uncontrollably - tears rolling down his face and pulling away when she comes at him again with the clippers. I think he knew the magnitude of his loss.
"Is that about what you had in mind?" she asked me.
"No. That was the exact OPPOSITE of what I had in mind" I replied.
She didn't say anything.
I was horrified.
AJ was glad to be climbing out of her chair.
Owen was skipping out the door for ice cream.
I paid.
I did not tip.
I am sad.


All of AJ's beautiful hair, gone.
It'll take at least 6 months to grow back.

I told Steve he went from being a really cute kid, to just an average kid.
I told Steve he looks like one of those kids that you look at and think, "oooh. that kid looks like a brat"
Steve said it looks like we've decided to join the KKK and we started our transformation with AJ. All he needs is a swastika tattooed on the back of his neck.

It also looks a little bit like he has a Mowhawk (steve asked me if I had them cut it into a Mohawk) because he has a streak of darker hair running down the middle of his head.

AJ, I'm so sorry. It'll grow back. And I'll never cut your gorgeous hair again.

If anyone wants to make a hat donation, we're accepting.