Life on the High Plains

Do you know when it's the best time to visit the zoo?  When it's cold and damp and there's hardly any people there. Seriously!  I used to volunteer at the zoo and this is the first time I've seen the wolf pack. The giraffes were all in their house.  They must be too wimpy to go out in the cold. The meerkats were very active.  This one was keeping a close eye on us.  I want a meerkat! The elephants were out roaming around. They were enjoying the enrichment that the keepers had out for them. We got to warm up in the budgie house while Miss G fed them a snack. In the reptile house I even stopped to take a good look at the snakes.  My friend, Ann from Yellowstone, has been trying to teach me to value these guys and maybe it's working.  Snakes are good...snakes are good...don't harm the snakes...snakes have value. Mr. Tiger was looking majestic. Mr. Grizzly, either Digger or Emmett, was relaxing...

 While our company was here last week we had one day where it was possible to go on an outing so we headed down to the Royal Gorge, or as my granddaughter calls it "The Grand Canyon". This is Irv's sister and brother-in-law.  They were kind enough to make the long drive to Colorado for our grandson's graduation. We go to have Miss G to ourselves for the day!  The Gorge has a couple attractions for adults and the kids get to have fun too! Miss G isn't afraid of anything.  She went right up this climbing wall. Her uncle got in on the fun too. Pappy and Miss G are always up to something. Miss G got to drive the locomotive. Then she needed to be refueled. I think this one was probably around when I was Miss G's age. Of course we had to ask a random stranger to take a group photo.  Miss G had no fear of walking across the bridge. There's the Royal Gorge Route train way d...

Well, the moment we have waited 18 years for has come and gone.  Mr. Bean's graduation was last week.  Mr. Beans has been an integral part of our life since the day he was born and especially since he moved to Colorado at age two. My camera was acting up, but I managed to get this one and only shot of him receiving his diploma. His mom, pictured above, has done an amazing job with him.  He has always been a kind and caring person.  Doesn't his mom look beautiful? Pappy was only blessed with three daughters so having Mr. Beans so close has been a real blessing.  The two of them are best buds. There's always the obligatory photos after the graduation.  It was freezing cold outside so we stayed inside for some photos. Here's my two favorite grand kids.   Miss G was so good during the ceremony.  Her mom said that it was all due to the iPad. Here's Mr. Beans and his cousin Logan.  They h...

My "She Shed" has finally gotten to the point where I can call it 99% finished so I thought it was time to blog about the whole process.  (I apologize in advance for the length of this post.) The first step was to find the basic shed that I wanted.  We visited all the big box stores plus some local shed builders before deciding on the model above.  I liked the slant of the roof, the transom windows and the ability to add extra windows.  This model can from Lowe's, which by the way is an awesome place--they offer a 10% military discount on all materials which adds up to quite a lot when you're buying a shed.  A guy came out and built the whole thing onsite in just a day. Because this is not just your average shed, it needed some enhancements you don't usually find in a shed. The first step was insulation.  My oil paints (and me) can be damaged by overheating or being too cold so we wanted to do everything we could to control the temperat...