My sunflowers~Good Fences~050715

Now that the pesky rat is gone who was eating my sunflowers out front, they are thriving and blooming.  And, one is about 8' tall! The fence is 6' and, as you can see, one of them towers over the fence! I see birds on them almost every morning now, too, and I enjoy that.  I planted these along our fence with the neighbor to the west, so they get full sunlight almost all day.  Good Fences for May 7, 2015.  To visit Good Fences, please go to:    http://run-a-roundranch.blogspot.com/

Cloudy skies and cooler temps!

We had cloudy skies yesterday and this morning I already see clouds overhead.  Our temps have dropped from 102 to 99, to 97, and down to 88 yesterday!  THANK GOODNESS!  Nobody was ready for triple digit heat!  (at least not me!)  And, temps will move down to the higher 70's in the next day or so.  It will be a nice weekend to visit the horses (IF I have the energy!).

I pulled over after our visit to COSTCO last night.  Hubby wanted to replace our 10 year old TV in the bedroom, so we bought one at COSTCO, took it home, plugged it in, and watched another episode of "Turn:  Washington's Spy Ring" on AMC.  Hubby leaned out the window and snapped this photo for me.  I love the orange on the clouds, don't you?  That's Mt. San Jacinto, above Palm Springs, in the photo.

Great-grandparents...some thoughts

Spare Parts did a beautiful blog post about his own grandmother blowing bubbles with his granddaughter.  You can visit it here:

http://sparepartsandpics.blogspot.com/2015/05/never-too-old.html

My grandchildren will never see their great-grandparents.  All 4 of them (on my side) are gone.  My mom died in 2000 and my dad in 2001.  My husband's parents went after that.

Fortunately, we have a close relationship with each of our kids.  Our daughter has 2 girl, who just turned 2, and our son has a 6 year old boy and a 5 month old girl.  AND, bonus, bonus*** we live just 10-12 miles away from both families!   :-)   And, I get to babysit at least once a week!   :-)  I can't WAIT to retire!

Here are two of the little munchkins:

A cluttered desk...sigh...

So, I had to sit down with my principal today and go over my formal evaluation.  And, once again, I got dinged for "clutter".

EXCUSE ME?

Now, look...I've always had a cluttered desk.  I actually don't sit at a desk at school.  I don't even know where the bottom of my desk is.  I NEVER use it.  I just use to to throw stuff onto.    I do use a table, which has my computer on it because I HAVE to use it to project my iPad to the pull-down screen in my room.  However, the projector light is now burned out after 10 years and my district isn't replacing the bulbs, so I am KAPUT.  ...sigh...

So, the week before he was to come to my room, I started cleaning.  I did NOT have piles of stuff anywhere, but my table did have a couple of piles of student work to be graded.  I got dinged.

HIS office is immaculate.  And cold.  And sterile.  It has no personality. My room has photos the kids took on their iPads, it has photos I've taken of my horses, and it has photos of my university.  It's very colorful.  However, one boy has constantly pulled off the bottom of my focus wall, and I got dinged for that.

...sigh...

I much prefer this photo and quote!   :-)  But, that's just me.  Oh, and by the way, two years ago, when he was getting ready to come do a formal observation, HE LOST the lesson plan I'd given him.  Well, I want you to know that I marched over to my CLUTTERED TABLE, reached in, and pulled it out.  SO THERE!

Hot days

It's so dang hot right now I could scream.  It was 100 degrees, in the shade, on our porch yesterday afternoon.  And, today it is forecast to be 102.  I'm hot.  The kids are hot.  My room isn't entirely cool.  The air conditioner IS working, but with 27 bodies in it, by afternoon, it's stinky and smelly.

I need to come home this afternoon and clean and disinfect every hummingbird feeder.  I don't want the little guys to get sick from the sugar mixture and, with temps this high, I need to do this.

Not much going on.  Hubby has to work Saturday, so I'll go up to the horses then.  I can't wait.

Bye bye cloudy skies!

It was perfectly clear here yesterday, not like our last few cloudy days here in the desert and mountains.  And, it was also 93 degrees.  Temps are expected to climb up to 97 by Thursday.  Ugh!  Our neighbors all had their air conditioners on yesterday afternoon, but, with all of our trees out front, we haven't had to turn ours on yet this week.  MAYBE on Thursday.

We got our water bill and I checked it.  We are allocated 29,000 cubic feet.  We only used 4400.  It's good to know that during this drought, we are using so little water.  It's only the hubs and myself at home now, and we only use the dishwasher once a week, and I only have TIME to do laundry on the weekends.  We do NOT wash our cars at home, and we don't use the automatic sprinklers.  Heck, we don't even have a lawn!

Anyway, we won't be seeing THIS for some time...sigh...

My dad...

It was way too chilly and way too windy yesterday to even THINK about going outside, so I decided to TRY to take some photos of old family photos with my new Samsung Galaxy Note 4.  I LOVE this cell phone and its camera!  We don't have a scanner at home and I was anxious to give this technique a try!

So, I took a photo of each photo, sent it to Facebook (I couldn't figure out how to email it to myself!), downloaded it from Facebook to my computer desktop, then I opened it up in PicMonkey to crop it, and THEN finally I posted it on Ancestry.com.  Phew!  What can I say?  It worked for me.

Of course, that afternoon, when we were having dinneer with our son and his family, he said, "WHY don't you just scan these?" and took them to his scanner.  HA, ha!  His scanner wasn't working!  Smarty pants!

So, here are some of the photos I took pictures of with my camera:

 That's my dad in his WWII Army uniform.

 My great-great-great grandmother.

That's me with our daughter, 1978.