Spring Is Here! Woo-HOO!

Melting snow!!

Today is the Equinox - the first day of Spring!!

Aren't you excited?

We still have a lot of snow of the ground, and will most likely get more before Spring is over, but that's okay.  Just knowing that it is officially Spring puts a spring in my step.  (boi-oi-oing!)

According to the "day and time" website, the sunrise in Anchorage this morning was at 7:59 am, and the sunset this evening will be 8:15 pm.  Today we gain 5 minutes and 44 seconds of daylight, giving us a total of 12 hours, 16 minutes, and 26 seconds!  We now have more daylight than darkness.  Yay!

So far, our signs of Spring have been almost non-existent, but we've had a few clues to let us know that Spring is on its way.  

For one thing, the cats sense it.

When the sun is shining warmly on the deck, the cats want to go out and feel it.

Unfortunately for Weaners, the snow stops her in her tracks from venturing off the deck.

This is frustrating for a cat who sees birdies out there to play with.

She is one of those kitties that doesn't really fancy the cold too much, so she was having a hard time deciding if she wanted to be in or out.  We got tired of opening the door for her every two minutes, so we just finally left it open a gap.  This made her very happy to get the best of both worlds.

I wanna be out!

No, I wanna be in!

A couple weeks ago, I saw a moose lying in my front yard.

She was just being real lazy.  I have no idea how long she was lying there before I saw her.

After awhile, she finally got up, nibbled on a few of my trees, and rambled off into the neighbor's yard.

Then on the SAME DAY!, I saw these two moose lying in my back yard!

Apparently, my yard was the moose motel that day.

These two moose were hanging around in our neighborhood for a whole week.

I haven't seen them for several days now, so they must've gone off to scope out a different neighborhood.  Maybe they would've stayed longer if I had offered free cable and a continental breakfast.

Another subtle sign that Spring is coming, is all the birds that come around the bird feeder.  You can't see the birds in this picture, but believe me - Bossy surely sees them!

So while I wait for Spring to spring, I've been trying to finish PW's quilt.

Since this picture was taken, I got the border on, got it all sandwiched and pin basted, it's now ready to quilt!

All I need now is a chunk of uninterrupted time.

With the border on, it turned out to be pretty big, about Queen size.

I wasn't too sure about the fabrics she picked, but now that's all together, I guess I like it okay.  It's nicer than it looks in the picture.  The pattern was super super super easy.

While I was sewing, Beanie was helping me keep my garbage strings organized.

She likes that job.

Let's see, what else is there for me to talk about?

Nothing much really.

Oh yeah, I planted my first garden seeds already.

Another sign of spring, yeah?

I wanted to try celery this year, and panicked when I found out it had to be started NOW.

So yesterday I had to go to the store and buy some potting soil.

It's kind of boring to stare at a pot of soil, but I know there's a seed in there and I wanna see it sprout!

Okay, I bid you adieu for now, and does Bossy.

Happy Equinox!

Chilly Willy Day (and some extra stuff)

Last Saturday, we had our annual Chilly Willy Day at church.  It's a fun day for all ages where everyone dresses up like old Western days (if they want to, not everyone dresses for it), and they have a chili cook-off contest, a dessert contest, and games for the kids.  It really is a lot of fun!  

One thing I look forward to is seeing the cute kids dressed up in costume.

And it's fun to see how they creatively decorated.

In case you're wondering, the bank really was in business.  The kids earned coins when they played the games and then they could use their coins to buy stuff at the General Store.

A lot of kids bought these horses.  Someone did a good job making them.

Later, I asked a friend how much she paid for her peanut butter cookie, and she said "three bits".  I wondered at how a cookie could be half the price of a horse! 

We even had a sheriff to make sure all the laws were obeyed.

I enlarged that one to make sure you could read it.

Ignorance is no excuse!

Here is the brave and fearless Sheriff Scott escorting his wife on a romantic stroll around the town square:

For the kids, they had pony rides......

Ya, look at all the snow we got!  Pretty awesome, I say!

They also had a lot of different games set up for them.  I didn't get a picture of all of them, but here are just a few:

Cake Walk

Cattle Drive

Bubble Gum Blowing Contest

Corn on the Cob Eating Contest, no hands allowed!

There was even a bank robbery that took place!  (as usual)

I actually witnessed the bandits running away with the loot, but I didn't recognize what was going on in time for me to take the picture.  However, Sheriff Scott rounded up a posse to hunt them down.

It didn't take very long for the robbers to be found.

They were properly escorted into jail and the town was safe again.

Would you believe our very own preacher was in on it?

For shame!

He even pointed his finger at the little guy and accused him of being the ring leader!

As if.......!!

Anyhoo, after their bail was paid, they finished off with one last contest, well actually four.

Costume Contests for the boys, the girls, the women, and the men.

the boys

the girls, not all them entered the contest

the womenfolk

the menfolk

The way they judged was by introducing them individually, and then whoever got the loudest applause won.  But there was a lot of men in this contest, so they sub-catagorized them into three groups:  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good

(I had to get two pictures of The Good cuz they wouldn't all fit in my camera lens zoomed in. They got to choose which category they wanted to be in, and apparently a lot of them considered themselves "good".)

The Bad

The Ugly

Hey, wait a minute!  Why is Mike in there twice?  That cheater!

Anyhoo, it was a lot of fun.  Donations went to the missionary fund.

So, here is the "extra stuff" that I had on my camera when I downloaded all my pictures.

We had another beautiful moon on the way to church a couple weeks ago.  I don't normally take my camera with me to church, but the reason I took it that day was because I was SUPPOSED to have my own sink installed that day and I wanted to get a picture of it to show you guys, but it wasn't installed, and I was told it will be another few weeks yet.

Also, notice how light the sky is!  We are no longer driving to church in total darkness on Sunday mornings. But you have to remember, we get there an hour before everyone else so we can get the potluck drinks made.  We try to get them done as early as we can cuz when people start showing up and getting in my way, I get very perturbed.  Chuck and I volunteered to be in charge of the drinks during our annual Lectureship this year - oh dear I wonder what that will be like!

Here is a picture of Beanies Weenies with her chest hair stuck in her mouth.

Her chest hair is so long, this happens all the time.  It's funny watching her try to spit it out.

I hope this doesn't gross you out, but this is a picture of a sore that she has on the back of her neck right now.  It was a bald spot with a big sore on it - the vet shaved some of her hair off so it could air out and get some oxygen to it.  He thinks it's a "hot spot" where a warm moist spot on her skin begins to collect bacteria and then gets infected.  He sees it on dogs all the time, but he doesn't know why she would get that in the winter time.  Anyhoo, he gave her an antibiotic shot, and it already looks better.

Here is Bossy drinking water out of the kitchen faucet.

And lastly, here is a picture of my homemade blueberry ice cream!  I added half a banana to it, so it's actually banana-bluberry ice cream.  Yum!

And I will leave you with that.