Happy Weekend

It's going to be a busy next few weeks

around this household.

Birthday celebrations, graduations, Father's day

shopping, family get together,

you name it, we're doing it.

I decided to post some pictures from dinner

last week.  Why you ask?

Because I really like the painting in the background,

AND

I wanted to gross my mother-in-law out by 

showing her some of the food we ate.

My cutie son, Austin.

Some delicious food from Gringo's.

Some of the paintings they have displayed at the restaurant.

Hope you have an eventful weekend.

And HEY-

Stay out of trouble would ya!

We Bought Something that Rhymes with Oats

Guess what we picked up last weekend?

You'll never guess - not in a million years.

Well possibly in a million years, 

but it's not something you would guess 

right off the top of your head.

Hint:

This is what held what we bought.

If you guessed pygmy goats,

you guessed correctly.

We didn't have anything to transport the little guys,

so Todd found some odds-and-ends around the house

and went to work building this little cage to attach

to our little trailer.

Here's a close up.

Not bad for free!

We had to pick them up in Rocklin,

so it was quite a trek for them,

but they made it home unscathed.

Here they are mid trip.

Here's Domino and Biscotti.

The little brown one is Biscotti.

She likes to snort.

Here is Domino.

She just pretty much acts/looks like this all the time.

Here they are taking cover because it was raining 

when I took this picture.

This isn't our first time owning goats.

We actually owned quite a few years ago,

but they either died from old age, or we got rid of them.

We are wanting them to help clean up the property

and eat down the blackberries and weeds.

Two more are on their way,

but they are babies, so we have to wait a couple weeks.

So...have you ever owned goats?

What did you use them for?

They Call Me Black Finger

On Saturday, I was bragging to my son and husband

how I had managed to grow a little plant that I had 

broken off a piece of from another plant 

and plugged it in a hanging basket.

As I lifted it up to show them, the basket went crashing to the ground.

They thought this was hilarious.

It made me want to cry.

A not happy Brenda!

It was actually one plant that I haven't killed.

I really do have a black thumb.

Example:

I planted one plant in our grow boxes -

This is it, the only one that didn't survive.

These are Todd's vegetables.

Yep, he planted all of them.

 

I could get discouraged and just give up,

but I'm too stubborn.

 

So what did I do?

Went out and bought succulents

and planted them in the hanging basket

(that is now not a hanging basket - it is just sitting in a planter).

Aren't they pretty!

 

Then I went and bought a replacement plant for the tomato.

I planted a watermelon in the tomato's place.

I also planted basil, dill and cilantro next to it.

And there you go.

 

We'll wait and see how well these new plants do.

Memorial Day

Jaunt to Chico

The entire family did a quick little trip to Chico - 

one pair of grandparents included.

Alexxa had already been there, but Austin wasn't

able to go before because he had to work.

We thought it would be fun to go as a family,

so we did.

The two goofballs.

The entire gang - with me taking the picture-

Duh!  

We arrived in Chico around 1 PM and were finished touring

the campus and town by about 4 PM,

so we decided to head home while Todd's parents

went on a little excursion outside of Chico.

We took a wrong turn and ended up in Paradise.

Yes there is a place named Paradise.

We thought we would keep traveling the road and

eventually it would hook up to some place we

were familiar with.

Wrong -

ends up it is considered the longest dead end road in CA.

Figures!

It all worked out though, 

because if we had been any earlier,

we would have missed this beautiful sunset.

Looks like heaven doesn't it.

Progress

We had another busy weekend,

but Todd managed to get some of our project done on Sunday.

Todd used the backhoe to remove some big rocks,

and level off the area just a tiny bit,

but he did the rest by hand.

There was already a natural slope to that area,

so all Todd did was make it so that the rocks would stack nicely.

This is about 12-14 hours worth of work.

We were originally going to use blocks and front them with 

fancy prefab rocks (I guess that's what you call them),

but when Todd got to working around in the area,

he informed me that there was no way he was going to 

pay money for that when we had perfectly good rocks 

on our property that we could use.

Good decision Todd.

It's going to look amazing when he finishes.

I'm really excited.

Good Year

So the fun little surprise that we

ran across on our way home was....

The Good Year Blimp

It was a fun little ending to our fun little trip.

Long Beach - Day 3 at The Queen Mary

After we were done at the aquarium, 

we headed over to tour the Queen Mary.

Because we are cheapskates, we paid for the 

cheapest tour we could get -$12/person for an hour tour.

It was impossible to get a picture of the entire ship with

 my little point-and-shoot camera.

On a side note, we could have done a tour of a soviet submarine -

if we weren't cheap, and if we would have got there while 

they were still doing tours.

Fail and fail!

Here's a little better picture of the sub taken while on 

board the Queen Mary.

First line of business, take a picture of us on the ship,

while the wind is blowing 100 miles an hour.

I'll be honest, I don't remember too many specifics of the tour,

I was too busy being amazed at everything...it was so shiny!

I do remember that this is the picture of Queen Mary herself.

I think this was called the Promenade, 

but don't quote me on that.

It had a couple little shops there,

and we later found out that D Day papers were 

actually signed in a room on the left.

I believe this was the 1st class ballroom

(Yes they had different class everything on the ship).

The little squares you can see I believe held projectors 

or something like that.

The wood and artwork was amazing!

So much detail.

This was our tour guide.

He was giving us a little history on the Queen Mary and other ships

fates around the time that the Queen Mary was built.

Apparently, she is the only one still "standing", ur umm "floating".

There was the RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth,

the one on the far left was a French ship that was loaned to us

by France, and we (the United States) ended up catching it on 

fire and sinking it.

Oopsy!

When World War II broke out,

the converted her to a troopship.

She would ferry servicemen back and forth,

and apparently at one point in time they had 16,600 men on board the ship.

It was so crowded that the were literally shoulder to shoulder,

and had to do rotations to sleep.

Men were even sleeping in the swimming pool

(that was drained, of course).

Here is a terrible photograph of the servicemen on the ship.

It is said that it was even more crowded on the opposite end of the ship.

After we got a little history,

the tour guide took us to a suite.

Keep in mind this ship had its maiden voyage in 1936.

and minus the flat screen TV and a couple of other 

updates, the suite still looks pretty similar to the original.

As you walk in to the suite, you immediately see the sitting area above.

There is a door that leads to the bedroom with a little bathroom attached.

There were two bathrooms if I remember correctly,

one in the sitting area, and one in the bedroom,

but I could be mistaken.

Before you left the suite,

there was a servant/maids quarters (see above).

Pretty impressive and very expensive for the times.

This is the dining area, and the tour guide said

that it is still used today for special events.

I loved this.

It showed the passage of the ship, and had a star that was lit

on the bottom of it, as you can probably tell.

Most of the decorations and decor on the ship are art deco.

The ship had an indoor swimming pool,

that is supposedly haunted, but I didn't personally 

meet any ghosts on my short little visit.

They had a display of workout equipment that I thought was funny.

I think I need to try that fat jiggler machine.

After the tour ended, we ate dinner on board 

at one of their cafes, and then just wandered

around until about 9:30 PM.

I thought this was a pretty cool shot of the life boats.

It looked like they could hold at least 50 people.

And of course we had to get one superfluous shot to end the evening.

Doesn't Long Beach look amazing in the background.

That pretty much was the end of our trip,

but I did see one more thing on our way home.

Any guesses what?

(Clue:  It's not super exciting)