Random...

There was a mouse in our room last night. A MOUSE, for crying out loud! It scared the HECK out of me. Why? Because it woke me up at 2:30 a.m.. From a sound, dead-to-the-world, Advil P.M. induced sleep. How? I kept hearing "crinkle, crinkle"...the last time I heard that, Scotty's feet were hanging off the bed onto the nightstand and he was twitching on a piece of plastic from a toy. But this time, it was DIFFERENT. I kept hearing it. So I got up. It's dark, just a bit of ambient light coming from the outside. I head to the trash can where the sound is coming from, and hear it again, and again. So I turn on the light. And there he is, all big-eared and long-tailed...he stopped moving when the light went on. So I turned off the light, and woke Scott. And he said, "just put the trash can outside". So I did. This morning, the bugger was gone. But I think he went to the neighboring room, because their can was outside this morning, and it was NOT there at 2:30 a.m. when I put our can out. I should have had the sense to tie the bag shut, but was not in the mood.

I spent the rest of the night dreaming about mice, and being just totally icked out.

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Scotty has a preschool! Yeah! I'm registering him into Lexington Baptist Church's program. They have a good program, 4 days a week, from 8:45 until 12:00. On Tuesdays, he can participate in "Lunch Bunch" which means he brings a lunch and stays until 12:40 p.m. This is NICE. Best part? It's going to cost me less than it did in Manhattan. Now I just need to get his speech services started up at LMES (Lake Murray Elementary School), and they also begin Kindergarten registration next Monday.

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I posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook. But I wanted to share them here as well. They were taken when we went to Charleston to sign for our mortgage, and then the next day when we went to the Riverbanks Zoo.


One of my favorite sights in South Carolina - the Palmetto tree


Dad and the kids, on a cold and windy beach...but it was SO worth the visit!


A pier shot...always wanted to photograph a pier!


I spent the better part of 10 minutes chasing the seagulls to get them to fly up, in hopes I could capture one in flight. What do you think of this shot?


A good family shot!


Charleston's Cooper River Bridge - this is the largest cable-stay bridge in North America. It has 8 lanes for traffic, and a bike/pedestrian lane as well. It's also known as the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. I loved the look of it and shot it from different angles at different times of day and lighting (lots of clouds changed the lighting regularly)


Another angle - the sunlight was only on 1/2 of the cables...thought it was neat.


Another picture I had always wanted to shoot...sailboats in port...


yet another shot of the bridge...this was from the deck of a Coast Guard boat.


this picture was taken from the parking lot of the Yorktown Museum.



flamingoes always fascinate me. These shots were taken during the "courting" season, and they have a neat dance/display they do. Starts off with the honking (they sound like geese) of one exuberant lover, and all the others join in. They then all straighten their necks standing really tall, and occasionally, one bird will spread his wings wide in a display, trying to attract the females' attention.


Just so pretty....


"king of the hill"...there was a small mound, and the courting procedure also included getting on top of this small mound - guess being the "tallest" was important too!


fledgling flamingoes with an older sibling. I am amazed that they learn early to stand on one leg...though in this shot, the older flamingo's leg wasn't tucked under...see it there at a 90 degree angle?


In the botanical garden, they have a lot of lovely glass sculptures. There were several blown glass "candles" and as we were leaving, I got low to the ground in order to capture the sun behind one of these "flames"...in the hopes it would look like it was lit up internally. What do you think?

zoo-bee-doo-bee...

Last week (or was it the week before? I forget....see post below called Live much?) several band spouses went to the zoo...(it WAS 2 weeks ago...during spring break...NOW I remember). We had a grand time. The zoo here in Manhattan is not very big. There are no LARGE animals like lions, elephants or giraffes. But they do have snow leopards, lots of birds and a few tigers. There really are a lot of animals there. This is only the 2nd time we've gone to the zoo. We went when we first got here, in the dead heat of the summer (it was in the 100's), and found our zoo to be lacking. But I decided to give it another shot.

We met up with Eileen and her girls, Ginny, Randy and their boys, and Kim, George and their boys. It was all quite fun. Hannah loves when she gets to be with Eileen's girls, because the younger one, Sarina is her age! (we'd had a long drought of having girls the same age in the units we've been with!) And the older girl, Tessa, is really sweet and hangs with the younger girls. The rest of the crew was boys, boys, boys....

One thing we discovered at the zoo: When you are in front of the bear pen, you can look out over the fence and see Famous Dave's....and Target...and Arby's....which means you can practically see our house. The water tower near the park has the City of Manhattan logo on it as well as the Sunset Zoo logo. It was Scotty's discovery that we can see the water tower...and now, every time he sees it, he says, "Hey mommy, it's da zoo waddeh toweh (r's are hard to come by with him).

So, as usual, I took lots of photos...and I thought I'd share some with you.

Sarina and Hannah check out the chimpanzees.

This is the matriarch of the zoo...though I don't remember her name.
she just sat in the bucket...

Scotty poses with a sculpture...of course, he had the baby chimp by the head!

The black swan

I spent the better part of 20 minutes chasing peacock and peahens around to get pictures.
This one obliged me quite nicely.

I got up close and personal with a flamingo. I could have reached out and touched him.
I just kept shooting away. The lady in the purple behind him was amazed afterwards. She couldn't believe how close we were...I thought he was going to peck at me!

Hannah stops long enough to grace me with a "vampire" smile...check the fangs!

This is Sarina. She sports the "vampire" look too. When she and Hannah got together, it was like they'd been friends forever. I like friends like that!

This is Tessa. She has a ready smile and has the prettiest golden highlights in her hair...like spun gold!

Another shot of Hannah, posing after all our walking.

Where are the pictures of Scotty, you ask? Well, most looked like this:

I can't tell you why he was pouting...but he was....

Zoo, Zoo, Zoo....It's HOT IN TOPEKA!!!

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