my last post I titled green acres, I had every intention of writing comments under each picture and explaining just what I meant by calling our happy home, green acres. As I got the pictures uploaded my sweet princess had woken from her nap and well you know the rest of the story mommy's. This morning I was reminded of continuing on with my post.
As Keenon was leaving for work this morning I was doing the usually pouring yet another cup of coffee to keep up with my princess and kaylee was hanging on daddy's leg as if to say don't leave me, you're the fun one!! Out of the corner of my eye I saw something run across the front yard, I though great Cooper got out again, we have an electric fence for our two pups and well my dear sweet lab is rather shall we say determined to do whatever he puts his mind to.... so I was so glad keenon had not left for work yet... Then taking a look closer it was a dog oh yes, but one of the wild, coyote type..... I wanted to scream but know if I did it would leave our yard, I was whispering as loud as I could. So I proceeded to go outside and yell at it, I had watched a nature show and they said if you did this they wouldn't come back because they would know it was your territory.... when it comes to these things i'm all about marking my territory. But somehow I couldn't bring myself to yell at something that was in the woods, I was worried about my neighbors thinking I had completely lost it. So I explained to Keenon what I was doing and I just went back in the house. Two seconds later I hear this yell, or maybe I should say roar... Kaylee and I both jumped. It was my fearless hubby "marking our territory."
After this little event was all done we decided that we need to keep a list of everything that our "green acres" has to offer, or should we say inhabits.
Critter at Our Green Acres1. let's start from the beginning.... one water mocassin I encountered when planting flowers with my mom..... after this encounter my mom was the only one brave enough to continue planting.
2. one baby copper head the lawn guys picked up in our backyard.
3. a wonderful wild boar that gave our flower beds a new look, not of the beautiful kind either.... upon seeing these creatures on several occasions I began throwing anything I could at them... one time it was a sample of razors from the mail... When Keenon found this in the yard he knew it was time to do something about the above mentioned varmits... so we put out sulpher around the perimeter of the yard. It took care of the snakes of the poisionous kind and just left the garden snakes. The pigs remained. Cooper has enjoyed chasing one through the back yard only to luckily be stopped by the electric invisible fence.
4. A beautiful family of deer, not all of our critters are bad. There is a momma, daddy and two babies... so cute and we have watched them grow up. really quite fascinating.
5. Cute, rather large bunnies that aren't scared of Kaylee. They stand their ground as she runs after them, enough to scare this momma but eventually they run the other way.
6. humming birds that come right up to our kitchen window.
7. a wide assortment of birds, we even have ducks in one of the trees, much to Kaylee's enjoyment. I love to listen to the wood peckers.
8. squirrels... who doesn't have these little guys.
9. coyotes.... this encounter was not the first. One night Cooper was howling at something around midnight.... We both jumped out of bed and Keenon immediately knew it was coyotes he was talking to... sure enough he went out there and they were in the woods right behind our backyard... the boys got locked in their room that night... we now do this on every full moon... it is true that the wolves and coyotes like the full moon. I never believed that before moving out here. Sometimes they come out during the day and once again my fearless Cooper went a chasing after it and I thought it was a deer chasing a coyote but no never fear Cooper never ignores a good chase.... thank goodness for that electric fence AGAIN!
10. fox.... the first week we were in the house on the first day kaylee and I were here by ourself I saw a red fox go through the front yard.... so long city girl HELLO country girl.
11. garden snakes of the very, very long kind..... we had a small plumbing problem and I was instructed to go out to the side of the house (closest to the varmit infested woods) and turn off the water to the house.... upon looking for that thing to turn off I see the largest black snake scurry off into the leaves.... I ran and Kaylee starts yelling sake, sake, then she goes ruuuuuunnnn. If anyone had a camera on us we would win a prize for this scene hands down. I had to call Keenon back and tell him the house could flood before I was going back out there.... fifteen minutes later he was home.... might I mention his drive is usually thirty to forty minutes.... So as he came in our door huffing and puffing... he soon discovered it was just a little drip in our drain pan to our washing machine.... look I never said I knew how the washing machine worked I just know how to wash the clothes in it. In my defense, the water was going under the wall and tile into the mud room and part of Kaylee's playroom.
12. my all time favorite story from our green acres:
Keenon came home from work, he always gets home around seven or seven twenty, he came in and had the widest eyes and said you aren't going to believe what I almost ran into to. I was like oh brother here we go.... he said a cow... I said are you sure it wasn't a really big wild pig?!?! He was so insulted by my comment and said get in the car and I'll show you... so we go a block from the house only to literally see not one cow but nine or ten cows grazing on the hills. I of course start freaking out then kaylee proceeds to say mooo, mooo over and over again. This was her first time to say it, this experience just brought it right out of her! I told Keenon we had to call the sheriff because this had to be someone's cattle and that's a lot of money and can you imagine how this poor rancher feels having lost his cattle?!?!? Keenon simply goes in his ever so calm and sarcastic way: " so what do you want me to say, hi we have some cows in our neighborhood can you please come get them?" He told me that in no way was he going to call and of course I was now on a mission to save the cows so I of course may have started to pout and so of course he then called and simply said yes we have some cows in our neighborhood. The lady didn't act alarmed and actually believe us.. we then remembered we're in montgomery county and the northern part of the county is mostly ranchers. We waited on the sheriff and we were quite proud of saving the cows for this poor rancher. The sheriff took almost thirty minutes to come to our house, I was very upset as thirty minutes is way too long for a response time. Keenon went outside to talk to him only to find out that they are in fact wild cows, they call them feral cows (forgive the spelling) and they roam in "this neck of the woods" from time to time. The sheriff went on and told us that they brought in some "cowboys" to rope em' up and the "cows" destroyed their trailor and everything in between... sooooo NO ONE will come get them and thus we have wild feral cows that roam our area. We then asked what was he going to do about it and he said well nothing. How very comforting, can you just imagine Kaylee and I outside playing and I have to not only teach her to run from snakes but to run from cows?!?!?! Now did we ever feel so incredibly stupid... the sheriff had a few chuckles over us and then proceeded to tell us that he hunts the pigs out here. I've never felt like I live in the south more!!!!!!
Kaylee getting a kiss from nema their newest baby.
Feeding the giraffe's lettuce
Finding out that we are going to feed the giraffe's... this expression is priceless. Go aunt gi gi for capturing this moment!
Kaylee and her best buddy Elaine eating cake together.
Daddy and Kaylee swimming 
The new addition to our family!!!
Elaine and mommy having fun by the pool!.JPG)
Kaylee helping make her "duck cake", she is a very good little cook!.JPG)
Tasting the "bubble" (oreos covered in blue chocolate)
.JPG)
Grammy putting on her "party shoes"
Kaylee digging into her duck cake! When we first cut the cake she cried and said no no no.... my mom and I felt the same way after six to eight hours of work on these special cakes!!! We had to take the cake to the counter and cut it so she couldn't see us hurting her precious ducks.... it was quite hilarious!
Mom and I painfully cutting up our hard hours of work.... my mom really did the majority of it, I helped with the tasting aspects.... ha ha ha.
.JPG){kind=link}