Limmited time

My wonderful days here at my grandpa's ranch in CA. are numbered, my special family have already left the ozarks to pick my brother and I home. I gotten to know amazing cousins, supportive aunts and uncles, and loving grandparents. brotherJ and I had a fun summer, And we have both learned to get along better. We have been cleaning with Nana, preparing for my family who might arrive tonight. We'll all stay till the 9th of september.

My studio

Here are some of my horse drawings ; none of them are perfect, I'm still learning, but I realy like certain things about each one, like Connie and her mother Ashlie's surroundings, (top) and Megan's (middle,) shading. I like naming my horse drawings and giving them different personalities to make them feel more real. Bottom: Sally may.

Toad hunt'n

Last night, cousin H, J, and I all went toad hunting around the chicken houses. we found over40 toads around the brightest lights where all the bugs were . Many of us got peed on by the little varmints , who tried their best to make us drop them. In the top two pics., cousin H is playing with her favorite. I liked the one on the bottom because it's pretty colors.

Owl came for dinner

On Monday a worker at my Grandpa's ranch caught this owl sitting on one of the rafters in a chicken house. Back at home I'm usually the bird expert, but I never really studied Californian owls. Nobody got hurt,( unless you'd count the worker's ripped shirt,). J. ,( left) didn't ever get to close, but cousin H. , ( far right,) and I,( middle) got to pet the big eyed visitor. I've seen many owls, but never got very close before they flew away, and I know he really looks like a stuffed animal, but he's not. We let him go after we took this shot.

Camera hunting

Aunt Isa has recently been helping me look for a digital camera so that I can take pics. of the things I wright about here on my blog. just today we found one I really like, a used digital rebel for $400! Back home my favorite things to take pics. of are our farm animals,( especially kitties), and the nocturnal critters that drop by(racoons and possums) , looking for a midnight snack. Mom always says we have way to many Kittie pictures. well, at least I can make a huge scrap book of all the loved generations of cats on our farm. Cats have always been one of my favorite animals, and I think it would be nice to tell my future kids about the time I saved brother J.'s calico cat from suffocating in a peanut butter jar, or the one at the animal shelter I volunteered at who had to walk in a wheel chair for the rest of it's life because someone stepped on him as a kitten.

Ocean picknic

A couple weeks ago most of my family and I went to the beach. We all had a wonderful time collecting pretty rocks, wave jumping, swimming and building sand castles. I showed some of my cousins how to look for moonstones and shark teeth. we found many moonstones, but only one shark tooth, and we later lost it . Brother J. and some other cousins went out to the deeper parts, riding/jumping waves. I joined them after moonstone hunting. It was both fun and scary. We might get to go again with the rest of my family comes to CA. But when we got home we found that three of our ducklings died because we did not feed them little rocks to help crush their food in their bellies. Cousin H is very sad. We have one left.

A little... Mix up

Yesterday, Nana and I woke up at six-thirty to begin what is now every day tameing sessions with Megan, my Grandpa's rescued horse. We brushed and combed her mane,wiped a few coats of fly spray over her, and gave her a little exercise both in the corral and out.By the time we finished, I was a little over an hour late for work. I rushed into my bed room,pulled on my super stinky work clothes, ran down to the kitchen and was stuffing my face with cerel when my brother J. walked in cupping his hands to his chest, covering what ever he had from my view. The air he brought with him smelled of a a combined odor of clothes that had not been washed for weeks and warm fresh rice hulls,(baby chick bedding), which doubtlessly indicated that he had been working with the new chicks that came this morning. I paused eating just long enough to glance at the fuzzy yellow thing he was holding and ask, ''Is that a chick?'' I started eating again, when j. said, ''Nope, guess. I'm not going to tell you, but it got mixed in with the chicks''. I looked up, this time a little harder. My first guess was one of the cool cell kitties, but then, before I could say it aloud, two little webbed feet popped from the cracks of J's fingers, and a little yellow billed head. It peeped. I gasped. ''Mixed with chicks? '' I asked incrediously, droping my spoon and reaching for the struggling duckling. J told me that there were 4 others, and that Nana said we could raise them. We haven' t named them yet, but to tell whitch belongs to who, we painted their toe nails.

All summer at Grampa's

I have been spending the summer with my grandparents in CA, visiting cousins and working for my Grandpa at his chicken ranch picking up dead chickens, unclogging feed lines, removing junk and cleaning heat lamps. I never have been very squeamish about touching dead stuff, though it's fun to pretend sometimes. My younger brother J and cousin H, (who also work at my Grandpa's ranch,) get paid every Tuesday afternoon. Today while working on unclogging feed lines, my brother showed me seven little kittens living in the cool cells of chicken house 4. J asked Nana if we could keep them, but she said no, I guess because we already have a little orphan kitty called Dust speck, nick named- Beastie. Grandpa also has a quarter horse named Nut meg, though I usually call her Megan. Megan was an abused horse before my aunt, Lil bit, rescued her.