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.

Sorry to anyone who reads my blog that I haven't posted lately.  I've just been a real slacker, no other reason.    My excitement for the week was being high scorer on my husband's pocket pc bejeweled game!  (360,000).   The weekend before Christmas I worked two night shifts, and as a result, I was never able to fully get back on a real "day" schedule.   Every night last week I would wake up at midnight, and be wide awake til 5am.   So, to pass the time, I would lie in bed and play games on the pocket pc.   Exciting huh?   And as hard as I would try to get up early and stay awake all day, I couldn't.   I would fall asleep while reading to the boys, or fall asleep watching  a movie.   And then we stayed up late New Years, so I've felt like an Alaskan Brown bear in deep sleep this last week.  

And the weather didn't help either.  Its been high 30's and rain, rain, rain.  All of our snow has melted now, and the days are still pretty dark.   We have not had a blue sky sunny day since Thanksgiving. :(   Not the best time to be in Juneau.

We did have a nice New Year's.  We went to our church that night and had a game night.   Nathan and I played ping pong and then we teamed up with some others to play one of my all-time favorite games, Cranium.   I love that game, although the best time I ever played it was at my grandmother Billie's house on New Years a few years ago.    When my mom in her best sultry Marilyn Monroe imitation, sang, "Happy Birthday, Mr. President".... I thought I would die.  I never laughed so hard in my life.  I didn't know my mom had it in her.     For anyone who is unfamiliar with Cranium, its like a conglomeration of trivial pursuit, dictionary and spelling games, pictionary, sculpting with clay, charades, humming songs, and impersonations.   It is best played with people who don't mind making fools of themselves in front of others.   So my entire family is great to play it with.

We prayed in the New Year with the church and our pastor, which I thought was a great way to bring in the New Year.

  We got back in the groove of homeschool today, and started back with gymnastics yesterday.  All three boys are getting pretty good with their cartwheels and handstands.   We'll start back with swimming lessons next week.

Here are the boys doing their gymnastics:

I realize that for some, seeing big hunks of hanging animal flesh is not their cup of tea, (see below), but for my family, hunting is such a huge part of life.  After 38 years of hunting in Colorado, and on our ranch in Texas, my dad has plenty of pics like these in albums, and several mounted heads in their house (one elk, 2-3 white tail bucks, a javelina hog, and a coyote).    I can only hope that some day I'll have a big bear-skin rug and a moose head over my fireplace in my log dream home.  But if that sort of thing offends you, skip the entry from last week.

This is one of those rambling blogs, no real theme.  But I do need to mention that my husband is a genius.  He spent the entire day trying to retrieve some photo files off the hard drive of my laptop that died.   He had to use all his extensive computer knowledge plus some new-found googling knowledge in doing so.   Of course he tried to explain to me the incredible extent he had to go (something about accessing usb ports while bypassing Microsoft Windows, flash drives, floppy disks, blah, blah, blah).  Unfortunately, I couldn't fully comprehend how incredible this task was.   All I know is that he persevered, and at the end of the day, I had my Oct and Nov photo files back on the Dell, which is now my computer and the laptop is being sold on ebay for parts.   His computer is now a $75 compaq that he bought at a surplus store and is upgrading it  to all his specifications.  In the end he'll have what equals a $1500 computer for a couple hundred dollars.    I really don't know what people who aren't married to computer geniuses do when their computers go haywire.

Here's a photo of him putting his genius to work in forming the perfect snowball for pounding 3 little warriors:

And the war is on:

JulieStew is having a "We're getting ready for Christmas" photo contest, so here is my official entry, and a few other ones as well.  We put our tree up last weekend, but I wasn't able to post these earlier, as we have had computer woes, but thankfully my hubby is a computer man. 

Here we are with our tree almost decked to the full:

And Lukey playing with an angel:

And Scampy, thinking the ornaments are his personal play toys:

Now I just need to clean the house, bake the cookies, write my Christmas letter, and find envelopes for my Christmas cards.  Oh yes, and look smashing for the Christmas parties!   I did cut my hair much shorter - literally, I cut it.  Gave Nathan and the boys haircuts and then took the scissors to my hair - whack!  I think I did an ok job?  Lukey said I looked like a new mommy, and Tristan was getting a little nervous when he saw me painting my hair blue, but it all turned out fine.  (The blue was the hilight cream!  - nice cover of grey :))

I have a ton of ideas for blogs on a daily basis, but somehow most don't materialize.   Should I write a cute anecdote of the boys?  (Tristan forgetting that he put the guinea pig in the kitty condo for 6 hours, and sure enough, there she was when he was reminded by seeing an empty guinea pig cage later on in the day).

Should I write a serious post about all my hard-line convictions and opinions from artificial colors and msg to planned parenthood coming to Juneau?  (if you do anything for your kids diet - avoid artificial colors and msg - makes for "wacky-doo" kids;  pp - legalized murder of innocent babies). 

Should I just write about what we did today?   (read about Paul Revere, proverbs about boasting, "syn" root, memorized poem from The Hobbit, seed is to apple as pit is to ____, sequential spelling, couple pages of math and writing workbooks, ate chicken nuggets - doh - I think I'll have some wacky-doo kids tonight).  

Should I tell you about my new chore schedule for the boys?   (mealtime routine - Luke cleans table, Tristan sweeps under table, Morgan helps me load dishwasher, + daily pet chores).  

Should I tell you my latest book review or homeschooling product review?  (thumbs up to The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Robinson Crusoe, LeapFrog dvd's - letter factory, etc.).  

Or should I just post a silly photo that my brother sent me in one of those get-a-laugh and pass-it-on emails?

Why buy a truck, when you already have a motorcycle?

There were about 10 photos in the email, but these were my favorite.  I love that woman's big smile in the last one.