I haven't posted much on this page for quite awhile, but I've been posting frequently to my blog for sweet baby Dylan at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/diaryfordylan

He's almost 9 months old now, and I've been posting to his blog since he was born.  It is password protected, and I plan to give it to him when he is older.  What a joy!  In about 6 weeks, I'll get to start another blog for baby Audrey.  I can hardly wait to see her sweet face.

Here is one of my favorite pics of Dylan, in addition to the hundreds on his blog.  He was 6 months old in this picture.  Love that boy!

And here are a couple of pictures of Tamara from her baby shower this past weekend and one of her in the nursery sorting through all of the wonderful gifts she received.  They are richly blessed with friends.  Audrey is due to arrive on December 12, but I'm predicting that she'll come on December 6, since it is a full moon.  Yay!=)

I love to make dinner in the crock pot at any time of year, but when fall rolls around, I get even more motivated to throw something in there and smell it cooking all day long.  Since we work from home, this just makes it a good day in anticipation of a yummy dinner.  I had some boneless pork chops in the freezer, so I was going to go with the old standby of mushroom soup and rice, but I wanted to try something different and came across this recipe for maple dijon pork chops, and since I had all of the ingredients on hand, I thought I'd give it a try.  I pretty much followed the recipe, and they are in the crock pot now.  I'll post an update on the result later....happy cooking! =)

The recipe can be found on Jenna Weber's Eat-Live-Run website at:

http://www.eatliverun.com/crock-pot-maple-dijon-pork-chops/

We were ready to replace two white fans in the new house, but I decided that I would try to repaint them first, and they actually turned out pretty nice.  I think we'll put them back up.  Here are some before and after pics of the first one.

and here are some of the second, smaller fan.  It wasn't that bad, but I just didn't want the white fan

First, I took the fan apart, one screw at a time

I placed the screws and pins on a sheet of paper and labeled each set because I knew I wouldn't remember where they went when I got ready to put it back together.  I also took pictures of each step (many more than I'm posting here) because, let's face it, I'm not an engineer!!

Next, I washed all pieces that I would be painting in hot water with Dawn dishsoap (my favorite degreaser!) and I used a sheet of 120 grit sandpaper to break the glaze on the original paint.

Then, I rinsed them and spread everything out to dry thoroughly.

When all parts were dry, I took them into the garage and spread them out on an old piece of paneling that I often use for paint projects

I sprayed  paint from all four sides to be sure that everything was covered well.

Next, I painted the fan blades black

I used Rust-oleum oil rubbed bronze, followed by a light coat of copper on the metal parts

I used Krylon Fusion black satin for the blades

FYI: Here is what your hands will look like when you finish painting....

which is why I keep a bottle of Goo Gone under the cabinet!

Then, you have to have the trusty Dawn to get the darn Goo Gone off!

Oh, and I pushed the screws that will show into a piece of styrofoam board and painted them to match.

after painting

Finally, I put it all back together after it dried for about 3 hours.  I used the pictures that I took to get it all back in the right place, and guess what?  No extra parts left over when I finished!!!  =)

Moving along...

It's been awhile, so I thought I'd post an update.  With a few warmer days (and some not so warm ones), we made some progress on the house.  The electrical, plumbing, and sheetrocking are all complete, and the concrete contractor poured the cement for the garage floor and front and back porches this week.  It's only 18 degrees here today, but should warm up some tomorrow.  Jim is putting on the cement siding, and I plan to start taping and bedding the walls tomorrow.  I'm ready to PAINT!!!

Here are some new pics.....

Went to church, had lunch with Jason and Tamara, worked at the house in San Angelo for a couple of hours (thanks again for the help, Tam!) then came home and trimmed donkey hooves.  What a day!  Well, Pete and Jasmine seemed especially pleased, since I had to give each one of them a bucket of oats, apple slices, and carrots to keep them occupied while Jim performed the pedicure. =)

Here's Mr. Pete

and Jasmine....

and Jim trimming the weeds after trimming the hooves...

of course, with triple digit temps already here in mid-May, the grass won't be green long...sigh....

and here are a few more around the yard, starting with Katie eyeing the feral cats and Buster pretending not to see them so he won't be required to chase them!

Here are some pics from Easter.  Tamara and Laura dyed and glittered the eggs for Douglas to hunt.  I'm not sure he knew why he was hunting them, but he liked the game.  =)

A couple of weeks ago, I took a one-day beginners watercolor class with my sister, Trina and my cousin, Trissa.  It was, well, let's just say "interesting".  It was fun, anyway, and we had a lot of laughs at our own expense.  Yesterday, I needed a break from the computer and a stress reliever, so I tried another beginners project.  I think I'm still in my impressionistic period. =D!  Ok, it's more like kindergarten fingerpainting 101, but hey, it beats more computer time. 

I should have started 30 years ago, when there might have been some hope for improvement over time......

Pics I took this morning at the cemetery and yesterday on the highway about a mile from our house....
Looks like we it might be a good year for Bluebonnets, even with the lack of rain.

Nice cooler weather today.  7-Bean Soup in the crockpot. Now for the cornbread.  =)

Well, I know it's been awhile, but things have been sort of crazy...too many classes to teach!  And, we've been spending any spare time we could find working on the "other" house.  We did finish the breezeway back before Christmas, so now we have something of a sun room or den instead.  Here are a couple of pics.  I'll try to add some progress pics on the other house soon.

I don't think I've mentioned that we bought an old farm house that we are going to move to the east end of our property and "flip".  We've been working on it bit by bit and now have the footings poured.  Now, we have to mortar one course of cement blocks on the long sides of the footings and hopefully the house movers will move the house early next month.  Then, we'll have a year or so worth of work to do...lots of it!

Anyway, the guy who sold us the house told us to take anything that we wanted out of it.  It hasn't really been lived in for 15 or 20 years, so there wasn't much that interested us.  But we did find four old rusting metal lawn chair rockers, and they reminded me of my Mema and Papa's old farm chairs, so I "reclaimed" them by sanding and painting them.  Here are some before and after pics.

Hey, I'm famous - well.....sort of anyway.  I wrote a poem about Neil Armstrong about a year ago, and when I read that he had died, I contributed it to a CNN tribute page.  One of CNN's producers emailed me asking for more information about the poem and for a comment on why I wrote it, how I felt about future space exploration, etc., and they put the comment and a link to the poem on their I-Report page about Armstrong, along with some contributions from others.  Here is the page, which can be found at:

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/27/comments-armstrongs-one-small-step-resonated-for-all-mankind/

My comment is at the bottom of this image, though there were others that followed it. 

Kinda cool....  =)