Fire Island

Summertime greetings from the Hawkes family!

Here's a few pictures from "Fire Island," our back yard garden. We put in a pool this summer and did a whole bunch of digging in the yard. We've gone for the maximum garden effect, but it definately seems as though there is always more to do.

We've named it "Fire Island" because we have the very best in redneck outdoor lighting--tiki torches!! Without all the trees in the back, we'd probably be visible from the Space Shuttle when everything is burning. I'm not sure it's the best thing to have tiki torches over pine-needle mulch, but at least it will be interesting if it ever goes up.

I'm actually writing this from one of the back yard swings right now, but the pictures were taken during the day. Sorry. You have to come visit for the full effect. We went for the whole Feng Shui thing and did the fire, wind, earth and water thing. Both swings are lit up by torches, near the creek, and have windchimes. Oh, and they are on the ground. That's the 4 major elements, right? And to top it all off, they are all wi-fi enabled. I guess that's 2006 Feng Shui!

Here's a few pictures as we trudge through the dog days of summer.

"Miracle" kittens

Some of you may have heard this story, but this past October, our neighbor moved out. Before he left, he asked us if we'd take his little kitty cat, who was spayed, declawed and very sweet. We declined, because we just didn't feel we needed to add a 3rd cat to our family. Two is probably 2 too many.

Well, they moved out and left the little kitty behind, which shocked me a bit, especially since it was the coldest day of the year up to that point and she'd never been outside. We adopted her immediately, and found out pretty quickly that although she was not declawed, she was definately sweet. Shortly thereafter, she began going outside with her 'brothers'.

We've recently confirmed that not only was she not declawed, she also was not spayed. Either that or we have a real miracle on our hands.

She is definately still sweet though. Anyway, we now have 3 calico kittens, a grey kitten and a black and white kitten to add to our menagere. We do plan on giving them all away...but I'm already becoming pretty attached to the little one pictured here. Really-what's not to love?

Snowy Greetings! It's February, and the snow came down harder today than any other day so far. The kids have been outside killing each other with snowballs and sledding.

Here's a picture, to 'warm' your heart.

Last weekend with the snow that was supposed to be huge (not so, but it was bigger than most of the other one), we went to the big hill in Spring Hill, where there's a nice park and a few Civil War memorials. If you don't know the history, TN was supposed to be 'neutral' in it's position on the Civil War, at least politically. The truth was, it's got a lot of historical 'closet' confederate-ism in it's history. Anyway, around town you'll see shrines and memorials to 'famous' battles-one being on top of the hugest hill in the vicinity. As soon as an inch of snow had accumulated, Bob took all the kids down to the hill, and up they went---to slide down the hill on the sled. The snow was too thin and the grass was too high to thin on anything other than the main path going up the hill, but they did pretty good anyway and had a few good runs before it all melted.

It's only going up to about 30 today, so we don't expect a lot of melt off today, and there's supposed to be more later. Maybe we'll even get ALL the ground covered!

Here's a few more wintry pics from the accessing:

(before I go get them to post, I just looked out the window and saw Amanda whack Heather with a snowball that was packed so hard it bounced off her head without breaking. That was weird.)

I hope wherever you are, you're staying warm. I'll try to do a better job at keeping up with the blog...It sure makes it easier when you're stuck in the house, though!

Blessings from the Hawkes family....