OK, here are the things to find:

Brick
Purple flower(s)
Purple clothing
Something else purple
Still water
Chaos

Today’s word is in honor of my niece: Narwhal

I get to actually enjoy the day lilies this year–even more so since it wasn’t 90 F today!

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Wake up after having had dreams that my phone was broken.

Get up to discover that, despite charging all night, the battery on my phone is dead.

Switch the battery, turn on phone, get dressed and leave for Farmer’s Market.

After phone finally turns completely on, Michael notices I have a voice mail from my pregnant friend. I’m supposed to watch her kid if she goes into labor early, which is why I’ve been trying to keep my phone charged at all times.

Message says that she is in the hospital. She fell down the stairs–she is OK, the baby is OK, but they are keeping her for observation. Are we still on for her kid taking a nap (originally wrote that as kid napping, and that’s was just wrong) at our house today as planned? (We want to make sure kid is going to be comfortable sleeping here.)

Head to Best Buy. One hour later, I have a loaner phone, and my replacement phone should be here in a week. My loaner phone is NOT awesome, but I suppose I only need it for a couple days.

And now I have a preschooler napping in our guest bedroom while her daddy is visiting mommy in the hospital, where she’ll be kept overnight for observation.

In other news, I didn’t get the grocery shopping done today OR any of the house cleaning. But Mommy and baby are OK, and preschooler seems perfectly content to nap here, so in the grand scheme of things, it’s all good.

Oh. Preschooler likes ladybugs and caterpillars and frogs.

Just so you know.

So, last week I gave a friend a Thursday Photography Challenge, and this week she asked for another one.

Sadly, I forgot about it myself until I got home. Sad, ‘eh?

OK, they wanted to extend, so I got the full list now.

Here were the items to find:
park bench
pink flowers
pink form of transportation
something else pink
something that makes you think of Steampunk
exuberance

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Got a new lens for my camera, and it came today, so of course I had to test it out. I got a Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Zoom Lens (yeah, I totally copied and pasted that) which was well rated for the price.

It’s stupid hot outside, and I hate the heat, so I stood on the porch, in the shade, and shot across the driveway and yard. Here are two of the resulting pictures–uncropped, just processed from RAW to jpg with light balance corrections.

Here’s this evenings sunset. Not at all spectacular, but I’m just playing around.

Yeah, I got nothing special.

Today’s word is: crackers

Yesterday’s waterfowl.

Note that the littler ducks were not allowed to play in the pond while the teenage ducks were swimming around.

Bad influence I suppose.

Today’s were more entertaining live–less so in photographic form. The ducklings were attempting to fly from the water. As they don’t have feathers, all they succeeded in doing was moving REALLY FAST across the water in very short bursts.

But it looked like they were having a lot of fun doing so.

UPDATED! Now with more charred goodness!
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It’s been a long time since we’ve done any major house projects, so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

First up: Replacing two storm doors. We put in storm doors when we first moved into the house, however, two of the three doors were doing that metal rotting thing that storm doors do, so needed replaced. The basement door was cheap, as it was added within the first six months (I think) of us moving in. The kitchen was done a bit later, when we replaced the kitchen door (it was wooden and was unusable) we put in a Pella, which surprised me when I rediscovered that, since I thought they had a reputation for being sturdy and holding up. Guess not.

We went for twice as much glass in the kitchen, which I believe the cats will appreciate.

Both doors also have the pull down screens. I’m a bit apprehensive about these, but really do like the clear view.

Note the valuable assistance Michael received while replacing both doors.

Basement:

Kitchen:

Next project: Replacing the pole light in the yard. Grrrr…..

Lemon Lily in the evening light. This one turned out significantly better than the others.

Thyme. For some reason I have a hard time taking pictures of groups of things.

This is another low maintenance rose bush that is absolutely thriving. And it smells good to.

The first year, the centers of these coreopsis were bright red, but the centers are slowly fading over the years. Ah well.

Apparently, when I get off work is the time that the mother duck decides to bring out her ducklings, since I keep seeing them waddling down the stream to the pond on my way home.

And today I saw the ducklings in the lower area, which are now quite obviously much older than the other set of ducklings. I counted eight, but as these were harder to see, there may be more.