These are more beauties that I saw blooming in Texas. They are African Daisies. I loved the yellow appearance and that slight ring of blue around the center when I first saw them. I'm still in love with something about the lighting/shading colors of the daisies. I can't put my finger on it, but I know they are beautiful.

May it bring you a moment of joy today.
Happy Friday!

Posted by danielle at 09:46 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Betcha can't guess where we all went while we were visiting Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and Munchie (formerly Baby Texas Bunny) in Texas!

That's right! The fair and rodeo!

uh oh. That would be three statements using exclamation points. hmmm... well, I guess I'm in a good mood thinking about our time in Texas.

So, where was I?

Oh yes.

One of the first things we saw when we walked in were the looooooooonghorns, as Sheryl says (in a comment on Flickr).

Yes, very long.

And just in case you decided to get too close and get stabbed by one of the horns, they had their safety disclaimer.

Note the Texas flags in the distance in the photo.

As we headed toward the livestock, we saw some guys doing rope tricks.

Then we were off to see the livestock! We walked in the barn, saw about 3 things of interest and couldn't decide which direction to go. Well, I knew where I wanted to go, and that was toward more longhorns.

Most of them were only a year or two old, so their horns were still pretty short. But boy did they have impressive coats.

Isn't the baby just adorable? So precious.

After walking through the longhorns, we wandered through the goats. After a while, it had that "you've seen one goat, you've seen them all" sort of feel to it. Boy were there a lot of goats.

That was one of the recalcitrant goats. That would be one of two we saw that day that did Not want to go where their handler wanted to take them.
"grumble, grumble, stubborn ol' things"

We watched the showing of the longhorns in the arena for a while and saw the judges doing their judging from horseback - which was unexpected, but made sense once you thought about it since the longhorns had to cover a lot of ground to show off their stride, etc.

And we headed to the mini herfordshires. Mini Herfords? Mini Herfordshires? one or the other. We'll just call them The Mini Cool Brown Cows with the White Head and Feet. Cattle, technically, but I didn't grow up around cattle, so I tend to say cows without thinking. Must've been all those "A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cow" books when I was growing up.

They had the longest, whitest eyelashes. I wish I'd been able to get a good photo of them, but it is one of those things I'll just have to tuck away in my memory since I don't have a picture.

so cute. I love their big white heads. I call that one patterns II. (roman numeral 2, of course)

Do you see the pattern?

I called this next one patterns I.

Those are actually longhorns, by the way, so I'm skipping around a bit. But I liked the pattern of the spots on their BEhinds, their tails and legs.

I got to pet one of the Mini Cool Brown Cows with the White Head and Feet. Dad has the photo of that. Maybe one day he'll put it on Flickr (hint, hint, Dad). Its hair was very coarse and scratchy. Not soft at all, like it looks. But it did have a bit of a wave of curl in it, which was very cute close up.

We headed to the petting (zoo) part of the building and lo' and behold!

What's a kangaroo doing at a Texas Fair!?

Who knows. But it was interesting to see. Very skittish. I didn't get to touch it, like I'd hoped. It seemed mostly interested in the people who had the little cups of food to give them.

That was the case with most of the animals in the petting area. They only wanted to see you if you had food.

The goat, evidently, thought my camera could substitute for food.

The deer didn't seem to care either way.

Aren't those deer kind of strange looking? They have such big heads. Almost like donkey heads.... very odd. But I guess they really are deer, as odd as they seem to me. I forget which kind of deer. Hmmm. This would be where the Texas folk could chime in, if they so desired, and show off their nature smarts.

We made one more pass through the longhorns and look what we found!

The mommy cow and the baby cow were standing up!
I love how their coats match so closely. I guess this is one baby that resembles its mommy.

Wait a minute. Is that really the same one as before? The mom has the same white blaze on her forehead, but their positions are backwards now. (before, they were tied to the railing with the baby on the left). Hmmm.... maybe they got shown in the arena in the meantime and got shifted around. That might explain why they are standing up now.

What do you think? Are they the same ones as in the earlier picture where they were lying down?

Either way, aren't they pretty?

We ended our trip by my listening to some music while the others looked at the 'fair' part of the locale.

And that was the finale to our day's adventure.

- The End -

;-)

P.S. Munchie slept through the whole thing. Can you believe she missed her first fair and rodeo?! No cows, no goats, no kangaroo...
.... no Mini Cool Brown Cows with the White Head and Feet.

Ah well, I know there will be a next time. Maybe if we're lucky in the petting area the goat will try to eat her dress. Tee hee, that happened to someone else I know when she was little...
... or was it her sandals? hmmm... maybe she'll tell us. hint, hint. ;-D

P.P.S.

Texas Seestor came through with the photo!

Posted by danielle at 06:59 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

and in large

When I was visiting Texas, there were many flowering trees blooming. I like this one for its puffy look and the Mickey Mouse that I see in the center in the branches, if I squint hard enough. ;-)

Some of the prettiest flowering trees were not the one in this photo, but had very tiny purple flowers. This made the branches look like the normal, skinny, distinct shapes, but they were highlighted in purple now. It was all very gorgeous and made me so happy to get to be a part of Spring somewhere. It may be a month until we see that kind of progress. It is hard to know, since I don't remember last year's Spring very well (except I do remember that it took forever to get here).

But in the meantime, I'm stocked up on flower photos. Some better than otherss, so I'll get to share those with you on Fridays again. :-)

Happy Friday!

P.S. HB leaves for India today, so keep him in your thoughts for safe travel. He'll be back on Tuesday.

Posted by danielle at 09:13 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

I am back from my trip to Texas to see Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, Munchie, Mom and Dad (and Max! - rabbit).

I had a great time. It was very relaxing and just what I needed at this time of year - a bit of warmer than MN weather to help me get through this last bit of blah weather until Spring. I also got to play and play with Munchie, which was oodles of fun.

I have lots of photos that are on my computer but are not on Flickr yet. And they obviously haven't made it onto here yet. I will be working on that throughout the week and weekend and hope to post a selection of the best ones here for ease of viewing. The ones I post here will have to be ones that are more cropped than usual to protect identities, so it will take some extra time.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know I made it back safely and that I had a great time. Now I have to go back to work, which I feel kind of ambivalent toward. I'm not dreading it as much as usual when I come back from a vacation. I think it helps that I am going in a bit late today because my flight got in late last night.

Talk to you later!

Posted by danielle at 04:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Today is my birthday! :-)

I love birthdays. It is a day to feel special, all day long.

HB and I are going out to supper tonight - at Outback - one of my favorite places.

And I go to Texas tomorrow to see Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and Baby Texas Bunny (more affectionately known as Munchie). I will be there for just under a week. I'm really looking forward to the time in the warm weather and with family. So, not only is today a special day - but a special week.

Hope your day is good too.

hugs,
Danielle

Posted by danielle at 09:07 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

In addition to the Tropical Barbie in the dress that I made, Mom and Dad sent me my slinky! Well, really 2 slinkys - but I didn't want to say that, because is it slinkys or slinkies?

hmm?

Well, whatever the spelling, here they are in all their fabulous action.

I, personally, like the 3rd one best. Mainly, because it reminds me of the quick action of the slinky as it flips down the stairs. The orange one wouldn't really go from stair to stair like it is 'supposed' to do. But it was still a lot of fun. :-D

Posted by danielle at 07:22 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

I received more of my childhood memorabilia from my parents. This Tropical Barbie was one of the toys in the box. Mainly, I'm posting this to show off one of my passions when I was a child. I loved making clothes for my dolls. This particular dress was definitely the highlight of my clothes making. I designed it myself - notice how there are puffed sleeves which were oh so fashionable then (80's). I fashioned it after the dress that Jennifer Connelly's character wore in the movie Labyrinth. Of course hers was pink and I made mine out of blue, but the general idea is there. Since the movie came out in '86 and I probably saw it on cable a year later in 87', I'd say I made this sometime in my 7th or 8th grade years.

Unfortunately, parts of it ended up kind of twisted around, which prevented me from ever entering it in any contests. But looking back on it, I'm still surprised that I went to such trouble on some of the details. I'd forgotten that I'd made those puffed sleeves, and even more, that the sleeves were half white and half blue with a silver stripe between them.

I guess that is all, other than to say that I always loved the soundtrack to Labyrinth, because it had original songs by David Bowie and I was a David Bowie fan. It was probably one of the first CDs that I bought. I still get a kick out of hearing the music from the other album that we had by him at the house - I think it was called Let's Dance. Or at least, that was one of the key songs on the album (and I'm too tired to look it up). Amazing how a snow day can sap the energy from you. ;-) No really, I think it is because I slept in yesterday and I've got my sleep schedule kind of messed up now. I'm sure I'll feel back to normal shortly.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Posted by danielle at 02:32 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack