Garmy the savior!

The day after Thanksgiving I bought a new Garmin. Bill's comment was that we could buy a lot of maps for the price. However, we used it on our marathon Christmas Bird Counts. It worked wonderfully. We found places at 4 am with no stress!! The only breakdown was when we selected fuel so we could find a bathroom. It delivered us to our favorite - Bucee's - clean bathrooms, or so it thought. We were at a vacant lot!! Fortunately we could see a Valero from where we were.

Yesterday after I bailed on doing the Christmas Bird Counts with Bill for yesterday and today, Bill asked to use Garmy. I was very lost coming to work without Garmy. The Australian accent is the best. Bill likes the English accent, but when it says to turn on FM 2920, which all of us in Texas know as Farm to Market roads, but Garmy in an English accent says "turn right on the Federated States of Micronesia two thousand nine hunderd and twenty". We have had a good laugh over it.

I whimp out on the bird counts. Especially after I tripped over the barbed wire and ripped my boots. I then had an excuse not to go tromping through the mud. I was sitting waiting on Bill, Bryan, Adam and Ron and saw some birds in the tree. So I watched them for a long time. They came back out of the woods and told me I missed the Grooved Billed Ani. I said "you mean the ones that were in that tree right there?". They were mad and said I had to go tromping around if they did. It was not fair that I got to see them. Later I heard Ron say something to Adam and I heard Adam say "she does that to us all the time. She finds birds from the car that we have been looking for".

I'm behind getting everything done. Christmas cards are late, nothing is wrapped. Oh well!!

Christmas time

I've been trying to find a cute Christmas blog template and they don't seem to work. So I give up for now.

I'm ready to decorate for Christmas but what do you do with 13 fur balls that would destroy everything in sight!! I will have to make wreaths this weekend for the doors. I think that will be the best I can do.

We are taking a couple of days off to work on the house. Bill's brother might come in this weekend to help paint. That would be great.

This is short for now. I'll have to get motivated like my niece and make Christmas cookies. Hers are adorable. Check our her blog.

Welcome to our adventures

We are new at this, so here goes. Here is our house.

Now for our kids. First is the baby Xena. She is the youngest but is HUGE. She is such a help when I'm brushing my teeth. We got her as a playmate for Kalliope. She is now 3 times Kalliope's size.

Next is Kalliope. She is the perfect cat, according to Bill. She was adopted from the Montgomery County Humane Society.

Mr. Rusty is Diana's cat. Diana, Bill's sister, rescues all kinds of animals, dogs, cats and whatever else she finds. Mr. Rusty is about 15 and came to our house after Hurricane Rita hit and he had to evacuate his house. Bill just loved him and asked Diana if he could stay.


This is Scarlett. She was adopted with Kalliope. She is about 6 years old. Her owner had to give her up. We suspect it was an older woman. Scarlett wants to be an only child. She hates the other cats, but is really sweet if she is alone. So if you know anyone that wants an only cat. She is very loving.

This is Sienna. Bryan's former girlfriend Allison worked for the vet when Sienna was brought in. She was a stray that a dog attacked. She asked us if we could keep her till she found an owner, she found an owner, US. She is the sweetest cat and she loves Bill. She tolerates Ellen.

This is Ariel. Ariel is now Dariel's cat. Our neighbors had a friend that found Ariel in their attic. She was very dehydrated when we got her, but Ellen fed her by bottle till Dariel came to visit and then we couldn't pry her out of Dariel's fingers. So she moved to Austin. She is the cutest thing and is described as the energizer bunny.

More on the rest of the animals later.