GOODBYE HARRY.....

My husband and I got up this morning and went to the 10am showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2.  It was totally awesome!  The weird thing is, I started crying at the beginning of the fight scene.  I think, because I knew it meant that the Harry Potter movies were almost over.... 

My daughter-in-law, StaceGhost, got to go to the Harry Potter World at Universal Studios in Orlando.  She brought me back a Griffindore bookmark and some Bertie Botts Every Flavored Beans!  She also  brought us some Pumpkin Juice to taste.  It was pretty good, although I would have liked it better if they had cut the sugar a bit more. 

THEN YOU STAND...

I had an open house at my home Saturday night for some friends of mine who just finished a 2 year mission to the Phillipines.  We set up 4 tables with chairs in the backyard, but a dust storm blew in, so when we first started no one could go outside.  After about 30 minutes and maybe 60 drops of rain, it stopped, so we went out and got 3 of the tables and pulled them underneath the patio cover (which runs almost the length of the house) so people could sit under there if it started to rain again (it didn't).  We had tons of people in the house and all they did was stand and talk.  Just. Stand.  I had two rooms of couches and nice soft chairs inside, and three 6' tables with chairs outside, but people just stood in the kitchen and at the entrance to the kitchen.  Now granted, the food was in there, but once you get something to eat, don't you want to sit down?  I do.  I did have some people go sit at my dining room table, and several people went outside finally and sat down, but the original group just kept standing in the kitchen.  I didn't get it.

MURDER MYSTERY

We have a flat-roof house - southwest style.  So occasionally my husband has to get out  there and blow all the leaves, pine needles, pine cones, etc. off the roof.  The other day when he did it, he also blew out the canalies (rain spouts so the rain water will run off the roof).  He didn't realize that a dove had built a nest in one, so when he blew it out it blew out her nest that had 2 babies in it.  He felt really bad and didn't know what to do, so he went to the garage and got a shallow bucket thing (low and wide) and "built" a new nest and put the baby birds back in (he used gloves so as not to get his scent on them).  Then he put the new "nest" bucket in a tree close to the canalie.  We were worried that the mother would not find her babies and/or would not accept the new nest, but she did.  I kept telling myself that I should go take a picture of them because they were so cute, but I never did.  A couple of times when we accidentally walked too fast towards the tree, she would fly out in a hurry, fly to the ground and flutter around on the ground pretending to have a broken wing.  I guess that was to draw our attention to her so we would not attack her babies. :0)

The next afternoon my husband accidentally walked too fast towards the tree (he'd only done it one time before).  Sure enough she flew out and did her broken wing routine.  Then another dove (the father?) flew down to the grass with her.  He walked around beside her while she continued to pretend to be hurt.  Then they flew up onto the wall and sat a few minutes, then flew off.  We sat outside for about 45 minutes and never saw her come back, so we were worried about her.

The next morning, we sat down to breakfast and my husband looked out the patio door and said, "Uh oh!"  He said there were feathers all over the patio.  We went out to look and sure enough, there were no birds at all in the nest.  We looked all over for them and didn't find them. What we did find though was a pile of tiny feathers, tiny feathers all over the patio, and with the tiny feather pile were some larger feathers.  So we figured that the mother must have come back sometime last night, and in the night something must have gotten all of them.  :0(  There were no bodies, so whatever got them carried all of them off.  The only thing I could think of is that something - our neighborhood Hawk or our neighborhood Owl - must have gotten them and killed them and carried them off.  Maybe he did one at a time, or maybe killed all of them and carried them all at once.  We'll never know, but we also know he visits our yard for the tasty baby bunnies.  He has killed the babies and left them in the yard and we don't know why he did that either.  Did he kill too many and couldn't eat them all?  Was the bunny bigger than he could carry?  Who knows?  And we don't know if it's the Hawk or the Owl.  We've see both, and we know the Hawk loves to come sit on our fence or in one of our trees. 

Well, that's the Circle of Life.....

SILENCE YOUR CELL PHONES, NO TALKING DURING THE MOVIE...

I just had to post this story about my little grandson.  He and his family took a trip to California a couple of weeks ago.  On their way home, he and his brother (brother is 3 and he is 2) were watching a movie on the dvd player.  I can't remember the movie, but it was one of their favorites, like "Toy Story" or "Cars".  His 6 year old sister kept talking about something, like what she was seeing out the window, or stuff they had done in California.  Finally, he turned to her and yelled, "NO TALKING!" 

He cracks me up!