Butterflies….

Last year we met Mary-Pat up at Crater Lake, Oregon.  Mary-Pat was just starting out on her journey for the year from of all places, the Roseville area near where my sister lives, and near where we currently are located.  I started following her blog, and noticed she was having problems with her header at the top of the blog that she was seeking help with.  I offered a few suggestions, eventually I made the header picture above which she just loved so much….and I was more than happy to be of assistance.  One thing nice about this header picture is that it has a transparent background, so if she changes the colors of her blog, it (the background behind the butterflies heart and wording) will change with it…..and with all those colors with these butterflies, there are endless colors for her to choose from which will match her header.

Today after her physical therapy for a recent knee surgery, we met her at Brookfields Restaurant in Roseville, not far from her PT.  Mom and Dad live going to Brookfields, and I can remember when it first opened not far from one of the restaurants I use to manager back in 1981…it sure took a dent out of our business at that location for a few months, that’s for sure.  (Thank goodness I got out of that vocation, restaurant work is hard, something I did for over 14 years, starting at 16 years old.)

This time I remembered to get a picture of Mary-Pat, and I included our lunch with it.  It took the waitress about 45 minutes to get to our order taken, not because of her lack of trying, but because we were engrossed in talking through much of our visit.  That is Marcia to the right, and Mary-Pat across the table from me.  You will have to visit her blog later to see a picture of us….unless I broke another camera. 

At the beginning of the month I talked about FeedBurner problems in that Yahoo, Hotmail, and others, are not sending FeedBurner emails through.  I tried a few fixes, but to no avail.  Read something from a blogger who felt that Google could fix this fairly easy, but they want everyone to use their Google Circles thing, which makes me NOT want to use Google Circles even that much more.  So I have now set up an email list with MailChimp.  By noon Pacific time tomorrow I will know if I set it up right or not to mail out the blog to our followers who have requested it.

This is going to be the first blog that MailChimp hopefully sends out…if I do it right.  MailChimp is free for email lists of up to 2,500 addresses, which means for me, it should be free for like, forever.  “IF” I ever got that high, then I think we would be having Amazon links, advertising, etc. in order to pay for it all.  Not even my intentions, that is for sure.

Here is Bubba and Skruffy earlier today on another “hunt”.  Honestly, we really don’t think either will ever get a squirrel, and as we said last year, it would break our hearts if they ever did harm one.  But it is a real hoot watching them try day in and day out.  Yes, that is a squirrel inside the little feeder house.

They have both brown and grey squirrels here in the backyard, and sometimes they can be a bit loud as they “bark” back at Skruffy.

    

There are two of these Blue Birds (left) which try to keep the other birds (like the one on the right) away from the bird feeders.  This year, they have even gone after the Doves, but since there are more Doves than Blue Birds, the Dove are less intimidated.

   

And this little hummingbird is the same little guy which keeps all but his girlfriends away from the hummingbird feeder, just like last year.

I have had some very nice places to post blogs from…mostly from inside the motorhome looking out at ocean, a river, a mountain….but here is one of the few places that I can do it sitting outside in the nice cool shade, free from bugs, and enjoy nature from just outside of the bustling metropolis of Sacramento.  Life sure is wonderful at times….