We have two kittens that we will be selling in a few weeks.     They are what we call "siam-dolls".    The mom is a Siamese and the dad is a Ragdoll.    They are 5 weeks old now and cute as buttons.     We are asking $100 each.    We live north of San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country.   Hopefully I can find a couple homes for them before putting them in the classifieds.     The two we will be selling are females.    They all have beautiful blue eyes and white coats.    I think the two girls we will be selling have what is called blue points?    OK... so I'm not a breeder, we just let our cats have one litter of kittens so the boys could experience the whole birth process and we could raise one litter (shocking... I know!)   

Of course, they have all been handled (a lot) and are extremely friendly, energetic and playful!

Here are a few pictures of the lot.   They were not easy to photograph, they kept jumping out of the basket!

I'm adding a few photos of the mom and dad for prospective buyersl.   This is the Ragdoll dad, Fluffy:

and the Siamese mom, Angie:

We woke up the other day to a gorgeous rainbow.   It wouldn't all fit into my camera viewfinder, so I put two photos together.   PLease ignore the obvious seam that I just don't have time to perfect.

Last week we went peach pickin' in Fredericksburg.   Its the end of the season, but we got some great peaches.   My mom and sister joined us, and we ended up picking 7, 1/2 bushel boxes, including some for those who couldn't come along.   I got a 1/2 bushel box of Ouchita Gold for $15 and a 1/2 bushel box of Dixielands for $20 (we got a bargain - end of season, weekday and multi-box discount.    You think you know what a peach tastes like, but you really don't know, unless you've eaten a tree ripened Hill Country peach!  (ok, so I'm biased).

Sawyer rode in the baby backpack, and enjoyed picking a couple peaches as well (every once in a while I'd feel a peach hit my shoulder! :)

Real yummy peaches:

Picking peaches:

Sneakin in a bite:

Putting these boys to work:

We were able to put away 23 pints of peaches in the freezer, we ate several fresh ones with our cereal,  and I've already made a couple quarts of yummy homemade peach ice cream (that lasted all of about 5 minutes!)    Thankfully, we'll be able to enjoy these all year for tapioca pudding, peach cobbler, peach pie, peach ice cream, etc.   Mmmmm.

A few more "summer fun" photos.    The boys participated in the local library's children's program this summer, including some puppet shows:

A visit to our local fire department:

A swim party at our pool on the last day with 23 local children.   We live in a very small rural community, yet we have quite a few homeschoolers.   Of this group, 14 are homeschoolers:

Morgan:

Tristan and cousin Zak:

Luke:

the local crew:

And Morgan jamming out to Guitar Hero during our trip to the coast.   This is one xbox game I actually enjoy, but we'll stick to the picture of Morgan here:

and the little monkey, getting himself into a jam.   He's climbing everything these days, chairs, sofas, tables, walkers:

We celebrated my great-aunt's 101st birthday on Sunday.   Here she is before blowing out her candles (which she did.... by herself).:

If you are a relative, and want a copy of this photo, you can go here to download or buy it.  I put a larger version on my smugmug site, although if you want the full 3.2mb size, email me.

Here's one of my blog readers, my cousin Denise, with Sawyer:

My grandmother holding Sawyer Kane.  Someone is getting a little sleepy:

going... going ... gone:

I really haven't had tons of time to post photos or blog lately, but I did visit Alyssa at Crazy Busy and downloaded her photoshop action for adding borders in a jiffy.   If you've never visited her site, take some time to look at her photos - she is an excellent photographer.

As you can see in the previous post, I changed out the photos and put in the new photos of Sawyer with borders.   I'll have to try it with some of my other photos too.   A new camera is on my wish list of things I would love to have, but that probably won't happen for awhile.

While the rest of the country is buried in snow, we had a gorgeous 70 degree sunny day here.   Nathan and the boys drove around the ranch, and he let Tristan drive the mule (Kawasaki mule that my parent's have as seenhere).   Speaking of mules, the boys also rode Grandpa's mule and horse the other day.  Here's a photo of my neice on the 4-legged mule:

I have broadband internet!

Our house in Texas is a distance from the closest area that can receive dsl, and there is no cable options out here either.

But we now have broadband - cellular internet, or mobile wireless broadband internet if you will.   This is a great deal if you can't get broadband internet because of your rural location but live close to a cell tower.

Its 49.99 a month with no contract

Mellenicom.com

If you decide to sign up, use my email for a referral (cartwrn@ilovejesus.net) and I think I get a referral bonus, or bucks off my bill.

We also bought a booster antennae accelerator to go with it from 3gstore

Its not as fast as dsl or cable would be (if it were an option for us), but we're getting 700 kbps speed... compared to 40 something with dial-up that was driving me mad.   So hopefully I'll blog more often now.   And this is in an area the sales guy thought wouldn't get any coverage.  

From their website they advertise: 

Alaskan notions of a Texas girl has officially been changed to Notions of a Texas Ranch Girl.   We really enjoyed our Alaskan adventure in Juneau for over two years, but it is really nice to be back with family, back in our ranch house and seeing blue skies and the sun again!   Of course, we will probably be huddling around the air conditioner and think we are dying come summertime, but maybe we will be acclimated by then.

For now my boys think its fine summer weather (the weather in Texas right now is pretty much like a beautiful summer day in Juneau), and are always putting on shorts and flip-flops, when everyone around us are enjoying wearing sweaters and coats!

We have moved back into our house that we have owned for four years.   Its on our family ranch in the Texas hill country.   I do have one neighbor that I can see from my house, but since its my sister, its not so bad!  :)   Just yesterday I needed to borrow some eggs, so I called her house, no answer....   I went outside while I was still on the phone, and saw that her van was still there, so I recorded on her answering machine, "pick up Karen... I can see you are still there, I need to borrow three eggs, and Morgan is almost to your door to pick them up."   About that time her husband picked up the phone, and Morgan came home with 3 farm fresh eggs.    You can do that type of thing with sisters!

My other neighbors that I can't see, but live on the ranch are my brother Kolin and wife, brother Kevin and family, sister Krissie and family and my parents.    My great-grandparents bought this 600+ acre ranch in the 40's (I think for $20 an acre) and it has been in the family since.   There is a creek that runs through it and several stock tanks (when its not too dry).   Part of the ranch is also owned by my grandmother, and my great-aunt and cousins that live in Louisiana.   My dad is retired civil service, and he now ranches full-time.   He has a few cows, goats and sheep.   My new blog photo is one I took the other day right outside my house.    My dad also has a mule and pony, and my neice has a horse that are in the photo.    We can hunt white-tail and/or axis deer here on the ranch as well.

So it is quite the ideal place for four little boys to grow up, right around cousins and adventures for the making.

We had a nice Christmas yesterday.    The boys got bows and arrows that they were very excited about:

They also got bikes, so there is no stopping them now!   Morgan went to visit uncle Kolin on his bike right away.   We later went to my cousin's house for Christmas dinner, where I got to visit with family I haven't seen in 2-4 years.   They had a trampoline there which the boys thoroughly enjoyed:

And a photo of my two neices having fun on the trampoline:

We welcomed our 4th boy into the world last night, Thursday, August 16th at 9:40pm

His name is Sawyer Kane

weighed 8#0, 19 3/4" long

Will update with a pic when we get home (probably Sat. morning).     He is very cute and reminds us of Morgan when he was a baby.    We are in love with our baby boy!

I feel good... little exhausted and sore, but otherwise things are going great.   Sawyer is healthy boy and doing well.

Thanks for your prayers.

Its been awhile.   We're in the final countdown days til our baby bunny arrives.   Here are my final pregnancy photos.

Hopefully the next photos I'll post will be of a cute little baby!   The girls at work gave me a baby shower and then last night a few homeschool friends gave me a little shower.    I have lots of  "neutral" baby sleepers, and pretty much everything I need for these first few months anyway.

My mom is coming to help out middle of August for about a week and a half, so that will be nice, for me and for the boys.   They love when Grandma visits.   No one tells stories quite as good as Grandma!

I think that nesting thing has finally kicked in.   I've felt like a slug this entire pregnancy, but the last few days I've been busy getting the house in order and everything ready.   Its a beautiful day today and I think I'll take the boys to the new playground (after they finish their chores). 

I have been missing Texas, but from the sound of it, they are having a "Juneau" summer (ie.  lots of rain).   It is nice being pregnant in nice 60 degree summer weather though.

Any predictions on when this baby will be born?   weight?  boy girl?

After being here for almost two years, and missing having more social events for homeschool mom's and kids, I decided to start a Homeschool Mom's Night Out.

Our first one was last month.   We had 6 mom's come (which is a pretty small number considering the huge number of homeschoolers here and part of the area HS group), but it was a perfect number for just chatting and getting to know other mom's.   We met at one mom's house and had snacks, talked, and played a fun little icebreaker game.

It was fun, and we're having another on Monday.  Hopefully when the weather gets better we can do some other activities as well, like movie "chick flick" night, go out to eat, take a hike, game night, etc.   I'm also hoping to organize a couple park days for the kids to play with others during the summer.

For you homeschoolers, are you part of a Homeschool group?   Do you have "Mom's Nights Out"?   Park days?  What is your favorite part of the group?

I'm including a photo I took of myself recently (well, I set up the tripod and one of the boys hit the shutter button).    If it looks like a pregnant woman you would be correct.    Of course Nathan claims I'm right at the stage where you can't tell if I'm pregnant or been drinking too much beer (brother....!), but since I haven't had a beer in over 5 years, and my sonogram showed a baby... I'm thinking I really am pregnant. :)   I'm due in August and am almost 19 weeks.

And even after 3 boys this was not a last ditch effort to have a girl!  We will be perfectly happy with another boy.   We've always wanted 4 kids, and since I'm getting closer and closer to the big 40, figured it was now or never.

We're very excited.

I'm not particularly fond of posting photos of myself, but figured the fam would want to see "my belly".  Although I am not promising any belly shots that last month or so :)

I actually took this photo back at the first of November, just posting it to remind myself that the sky really is blue, and the sun really does shine (in some parts of the world anyway).   Its supposed to be sunny tomorrow and the next day - praise God!  I am ready for spring.

I am alive and well, figured I better post something, since my last impression has just left everyone thinking I am very weird!

Haven't blogged in awhile.  I don't know if life here is just a bit boring right now or I'm not very creative right now.  Its been snowing for a few days (nothing new here), and the temperature has been about the same as southern California and Texas!   Imagine that!

It is strange living in a place that is designed for winter weather.  It ices, it snows, we go on with life.   I remember ice storms in Texas.   We would be ranch-bound for a several days.  We didn't have 4 wheel drives or snow tires, and neither did anyone else.   Actually we don't even have a 4 wheel drive now, just front wheel drive and snow tires.   This has worked fine so far (except for the one day we got stuck in our driveway in the slush, but that was only because we didn't shovel our snow plow hump enough, then it turned to slush, and our car doesn't have a very high clearance.   Yes, we learned our lesson .

We went on a field trip to the local radio station, very educational field trip.   The boys said they enjoyed it - it wasn't as good as seeing fish eyeballs and fish guts, but they seemed to think it was ok.

I'm looking forward to seeing more daylight.  The snow has been nice, it really brightens things up, and the days are getting a bit longer, but we still only have about 7 hours of daylight, which is pretty good for Alaska, but I'm dreaming of sunlight and blue skies, and sitting in the warm sun.   One of these days we will visit back in Texas, and I'm just going to sit in the warm sun for a whole day and "defrost".

Tristan is addicted to handstands right now.  He's learning to walk on his hands as well.  It gets a bit treacherous in our small house - he's a regular monkey - but he really is a natural at gymnastics.  I think he has the body for it.  He's small, thin, but strong (like me!  ha ha!)

Take a look at how big Scampy is getting.  Here he's trying to get lovey dovey with Tar Baby (which reminds me... he needs a little visit to the vet sometime soon for some tutoring... if you know what I mean).

Take a look at Scampy's eyebrow whiskers.   Yes, if you recall from previous photos that I posted here,  like this one:

he used to have beautiful long white eyebrow whiskers.   A certain little someone, I won't mention names, decided that he didn't need those whiskers and needed a little hair cut.   He cut off completely the left side and gave a trim on the right!   Uggh... I was so mad when I saw that.  Poor kitty.

Seeing this last photo reminds me, Nathan got his sketch pad and charcoal out the other day and offered his own rendition:

I thought it turned out really nice.

We had some fresh snow on Monday, and then a couple nice clear days with temps in the single digits.   We also had an earthquake Tuesday morning, 5.6, but I was shoveling snow at the time, and didn't feel it?   Here's a few pictures to share.  Luke in kitty litter container:

Morgan catching snowflakes:

And a barn at Swampy Acres:

They keep horses, goats, ponies, peacocks, geese, chickens, etc. there and it was kind of nice seeing the farm animals.  Thats something you never see here - farm animals, and I really miss that from the ranch in Texas.