Awards!!

We have such lovely friends in the blogosphere & feel very fortunate that we have been recognized with some cool awards! Now we have the fun of passing them along. The first award comes from our friends over at the Creek Cats:

Isn't it pretty? Thank you, Creek Cats for thinking of us! This award is meant to introduce new blog friends to your readers. Here are the rules:

1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
2. Pass the award to 15 or 5 (or a number in between)other blogs that you've newly discovered. (Remember to contact the recipients to let them know they have been chosen for this award).

Our first presentation goes to Becky's Barnyard. Becky is our cousin and lives out in the country in Louisiana on property our family settled in the late nineteenth century. She has all sorts of cool animals (most of them rescue): chickens, horses, dogs, & cats. Go check out their adventures! (BB absolutely loves to visit Becky in real life, so she highly recommends a cyber visit).

Next goes to Sapphire the Beagle. Sapphire is a two and a half year old beagle who lives in Malaysia. Sapphire is very cute and always keeps her family hopping!

Ginger Jasper is another new friend that we really like -- floofy fun and great pictures! I know many of you are already friends.

Travels with Trooper is another new favorite of ours. Trooper loves the great outdoors and has all sorts of fun adventures. We love looking at their pictures and imagining the cool mountain air as we swelter in the heat and humidity!

We also like to visit Bajas and Virus at the WriggleButts to check in on their big doings in Norway. We recommend a visit! Their mom just started a travel holiday in through Europe, so she will be travel-blogging while on her journeys. We can't wait to see where she goes!

The next award comes from our lovely dog friend Mason Dixie:

This is what it says:

“This award is presented to those dog bloggers out there who know the meaning of GREATNESS. Their blogs are consistently interesting, funny, or informative. Their KINDNESS is extended to others without expectation of it’s return, and their FRIENDSHIP inspires others to do EXTRAORDINARY things. These are the blogs you can’t wait to read everyday.

In short, they are AWE-INSPIRING, full of wonder, and simply PAWsome!Pass this award on to 4 others who you feel exemplify a “Paw”some Blog, and leave a note saying why you think they deserve the Pawsome Award!”

We are pretty sure that most of our friends have won this award in the past, but here goes:

Our first presentation goes to Khyra the Siberian Husky. We love to see her adventures & we love to get her funny comments. Khyra has more friends than anyone we know and we really admire all she does for rescue dogs!

I'm also betting that the Dughallmor Beagles have won this, because you can't beat them for fun! We want them to know we think they are pawsome!

We also want to award Tom, Tama-Chan and little Sei-Chan at the Poupounette. We adore their blog for its beauty and charm. Total pawsomeness!

If you don't know Daisy the Dog, you need to go visit! Daisy is a sweet and beautiful white pit bull. We want to recognize Daisy and her mom for raising awareness about pitt bulls. Go check out Daisy's pink blanket!

Our third award comes from Cat with a Garden (they are currently on a blog-cation & we miss them so!)

Here is what the award means:

"One of the best things about blogging, is to meet new friends. I want to give the award to some of my blog friends who give me comments that mean a lot to me."

I couldn't agree more -- I think it is so fun to meet new and interesting friends through our blogs. I love getting comments from blog friends old and new! If you regularly comment on my blog, then you get this award: your comments make my day. If you want to recognize someone special or just recognize your blogger friends, please accept this award.

This last one also comes from Cat with a Garden:

I'm not sure what the rules are, so I am going to make up my own. I am awarding this to Noir's Nook because we have "proximity!"

THANK YOU to everyone who thought of us!

nap time 4 rockstars

It's just so hard being a rock star. Here is a look at them after their concert. What's that? Oh, they had 6 encores! No wonder they are so tired!!!

Hanging Out

Everyone is pretty happy that we are home (though Alice apparently got some extra meals during our absence!! ). We're kind of in low gear, as you can see --

Baby Bean lounging:
Tiger hanging out in a meatloaf position:

GK and I watching a little TV:
I think I woke Alice up (!):

We had violent storms sweep through our region early last evening -- no damage in our area, luckily! Dad Bean spotted this as the storm moved out:

What we did on our Summer Vacation

Baby Bean and I made our way first to Houston, then drove with our friends to Mustang Island, one of the barrier islands along the Texas Gulf coast. Port Aransas sits on the edge of the great ship channel that leads to Corpus Christi, one of the USA's largest ports in tonnage. You can't imagine how immense the landscape is! Pictures cannot do justice to it. Port A is really just a fishing town, and Mustang Island is relatively undeveloped, so the beaches are uncrowded. Here is a picture of the lovely dunes:

And here is the Gulf of Mexico:

Mostly we just hung out on the beach -- we set up camp with our chairs, towels, and a cooler of sandwiches and drinks. Naturally, in the late afternoons the moms enjoyed wine packed in the cooler!
The girls played in the waves and in the sand. Here is Baby Bean wading out into the water:


We love to go beach combing and we also like to check out the local wildlife. I have lots of bird pics on film not yet developed, but will share some of our beach finds. Here are the best shells we found -- I think you can read it if you bigify. Baby Bean found the lettered olive shell in excellent condition. It still had the snail in it -- dead, yuck -- so we had to boil it.



We discovered there were thousands of olive shell animals in the shallows, so Baby Bean and and her friend AddieBean gathered them up in buckets, along with hermit crabs:



This is some kind of wierd sea slug -- I haven't been able to identify it. It moved around and had blue dots on it!! It is right underneath the seaweed.


We found out that the state shell is a lightning whelk, but we didn't see any of those.


We also went on a cruise in the ship channel to watch dolphins -- we saw lots! Here is a picture of the Lydia Ann Lighthouse on St. Joseph's Island. It is still used, but is not part of the US lighthouse system. It was first built in 1840s, but was rebuilt after a hurricane in the early 20th century.
I love looking at the Sky Watch pictures over at the Dughallmor Beagles, so took lots of Gulf Sky pics. Here are two:


On the way home, we couldn't resist stopping at a shop in an old house in Ganado, TX called Granny's Attic. Look what I bought -- a chair for my porch! I took Mishcat's advice and framed my spore print, you can see here:


I generally don't do long posts, so if you got this far, thanks for looking at my pics!
We had a really good time on our trip!

The Rose Jugglers are headed to the Beach!

We will be going on vacation next week -- our annual girls beach trip with two of our best friends! One of our hobbies is shells, so we love to walk along the beach to look for them. Here is a picture of part of our collection -- most of these shells were purchased or given to us by other shell enthusiasts. You can see I have some cat art interspersed!


I've been missing my cat art posting -- here is one of my favorites. Garden Cat Art:


My mom gave me an Angel's Trumpet years ago and it reseeds itself. This is the first bloom of the summer. The blossom only lasts one day!




Baby Bean's luau was a huge success! We had perfect weather and I think everyone had a good time -- most of all, Baby Bean!!



Hope you all have a happy week!

Tiger's Clubhouse

One of Tiger's favorite places is the shrubbery by the back door; Baby Bean has pronounced this "Tiger's Clubhouse." GK likes it too, and Tiger graciously lets him hang out in it from time to time. Tiger is just so cool -- ask him, he'll tell you!


Tiger also has a tree house, but GK never tries to go there. Here is Tiger posing as a great and fierce Black Panther:





I've been running the new sprinklers in the back because it has been so hot. It was overcast this morning and I saw these mushrooms out in the garden. They were very fragile & felt jelly-like. The caps were transparent. They only lasted a few hours -- as soon as the sun came out they were gone. Aren't they cool??!


Yesterday was Baby Bean's real birthday, but her party is not until next Saturday. She decided on the Luau Swim Party, so we are gearing up with grass skirts, an inflatable palm tree, hula hoops, a palm tree pinata, and a limbo set! Just keep all paws crossed that it doesn't rain!!

A Rockstar Eating Yogurt

REMEMBER I THE ANIMAL BAND? WELL HERE IS A BACKSTAGE PASS TO SEE TIGER EATING A GOURMET ROCK STAR MEAL; PEACH YOGURT. WELL WATCH THIS WHILE LISTENING TO I THE ANIMAL BAND.

TIGER SAYS PURRRRRRRRS