At the end of the last post, I shared a picture of the cute Robin’s eggs in her nest by the Holly tree.  Sadly, a few days after they hatched, they were destroyed by a Crow.  Sucks! 😦  I did manage to get a couple of final pics.

Momma bird keeping a close eye on me while I check on her babies.

Little Robins.  Only a day old.

Momma Robin laying on her babies.  This was taken during my lunch break.  When Mitch came home from work, only 3 hours later, the babies were gone and Momma Robin was chasing a Crow from her nest.

We hope she will lay eggs again in our tree in the future.  We are now keeping our eyes on a Woodpecker family.  It is challenging to get good “close up” pics even with my 75-300 mm telephoto lens.  The nest is way up the tree.  Here are a few I took today.  Momma Woodpecker is super fast when she comes in to feed, but I hope to get a picture of her also.

The nest.

Baby Woodpecker waiting for mom.

Opening its little mouth for food.

Hoping to get some better pics soon.  🙂

Last weekend we had perfect weather for playing in the yard.  Booyah brings Mr. Bear out to play.  There is some background about Mr. Bear you should know.  Mr. Bear belonged to me.  He was given to me by a good friend many, many moons ago.  When we were packing up to move, I put Mr. Bear along with some other stuffed animals in a bag for a Goodwill donation.  I placed the bag in the foyer along with some other donation items.  I left the room to continue to pack.  When I came back Cueball had taken Mr. Bear out of the bag and was laying with him.  I picked the bear up and placed him back in the bag.  Cueball got up and got Mr. Bear out of the bag again.  I again placed Mr. Bear back in the bag.  I waited a few minutes to see if he would do this again.  He did not so I continued to pack in another room.  Later in the day, we started loading up the van with all the donation items that needed to go to Goodwill.  When I picked up the bag, I noticed Mr. Bear was missing.  I looked around the living room, kitchen area…….no signs of Mr. Bear.  We were in a bit of a rush to get going so I could not do an exhaustive search.  Later in the evening, I found Mr. Bear upstairs on our bed.  Cueball must have taken him out of the bag again when I left the room.  At this point, I felt bad about giving Mr. Bear away, so we let the kids keep him.  I don’t know what he found so intriguing about this stuffed toy laying among the many other stuffed toys.  Mr. Bear did wear a green/white tee-shirt at one point, but the kids kept taking it off of him, so I threw it away.  I guess they prefer Mr. Bear in his bare fur.  He is now a house favorite.  They all play with Mr. Bear.

After Booyah took Mr. Bear on a tour of the yard, we played catch and tug-of-war.

Booyah had a great time playing with that Bear.

At this time, Mr. Bear is still residing outside along with the chicken stuffie and the two cuz toys.  Our yard is covered in pollen so the stuffies are a bit dusty, dirty and I don’t want to bring them in until they are cleaned up a bit.  Pollen does not bother me, but Mitch’s allergies are awful this time of year.

Among the girls, the cuz toy is a favorite.  Maggie got two new cuz toys for her birthday last year.  The green one lost its ability to squeak not too long after we got it, but the pink one has been spared its squeaking ability.

Pippi wants to play too.

Maggie only played for a little bit, but I was so happy to see her sprinting around the yard and playing with Cuz.  I know she is getting old; I don’t like to think about it.  She is my heart dog.  These moments are precious and make me smile.  I hope to have many more of moments like these with her, but you never know what life holds in store for you, so I am cherishing all of them.  Okay, enough of that, my eyes are getting teary.

Pippi and Mitch play.

Mitch is teasing her.

What is that saying…..Keep your eye on the ball.  I think she does this very well.

They all seem to want to spend more time outside at our new place.  Maybe because the weather has been so cool.  We will see when summer arrives if they change their tune.  Maggie and I will be lounging in our baby pools for sure.  We will definitely miss our pool at the old house this year.  We have lots of projects we are working on inside the house.  I may share some of them here.  It will be the first time for us to remodel a kitchen and two bathrooms.   I am hopeful that it won’t be a renovation nightmare.  🙂  Mitch is very handy and I am eager to help and follow instructions very well so we are sure to be successful!

One of the things we are working on in the back yard is raking up all the leaves around the Magnolia tree.  We have already raked 15 bags.  We have 15 or so more to go.  Years and years of leaves!

Booyah enjoys laying in the leaves.

Another is removing all the holly trees along the back side of the house.  We have successfully removed two.  They took an hour each to dig out of the ground.  Just 8 more to go.  We are going to finish this project hopefully by fall.  I visualize a patio from the deck all the way along side the back of the house ending at the master bath window.  There is a reason why we will be stopping at the master bath window, but will share that later, when we get to that point.  😉 We learned a lot from building our last patio.  We know what not to do now.  I want something that will be maintenance free.  🙂

But before we can continue with removing the holly trees, these little guys need to hatch and leave the nest.

This nest is in the holly next to our a/c unit.  I can see it from our dinning room window.  I hope I am home when they start to hatch and wish I had a video camera that I could set up.

Happy Easter everyone!  We hope you have a wonderful day with family and friends!!

Cueball has found a new past time.  Digging.  Not just with his paws, but with his snout!

There are now two good size holes in the yard.

I must say he is quiet proud of this, trotting along in the yard admiring his work.  Every day, when we let him out, he goes to check on these two spots.  He runs over, digs a little with paws first, then begins pushing the dirt up and out with his nose. After he is satisfied with his masterpiece, he takes off running around the yard.

He has created some sort of game out of this, racing around the yard happy as can be.  He has not attempted to bury anything in the holes or lay in them to keep cool.  He just likes to dig.

Booyah digs to perfect a cool spot to lay down or to bury his stuffie.  The girls have no interest in digging unless they pick up on an unusual scent that they must investigate.

Anyone else have hounds who love to dig?  Do they dig with their nose or just with their paws?  Just curious.  🙂

We still call him goofball, but now he has a secondary nickname…..Digger.