Zoo and Riverwalk

Sunday afternoon we went to the zoo with our friends George and Shanna. George had gotten free visitor's passes from someone he knew that has a membership. It was drizzling for a while, but after we went into the ARC (aquarium and reptile complex) it didn't rain anymore. It took long enough that we didn't really get to see all the animals because by the time we got back near the front of the zoo a lot of them had already gone inside.

This is the new baby flamingo. He just kinda stood around trying not to fall over.



This was one of the koalas. They were both sound asleep.



This was the baby giraffe. He was running around looking funny.



This was one of the big Galapagos tortoises. He came up to the fence and just stared at everyone for a while.



This is one of the meerkats. It was very cute and kept running around from place to place. This was when I had the camera, so there were tons of pitures of meerkats. I sorta have a thing for them.



This is the gorillas. They all tend to sit with their backs to the glass so you just get a good view of their back. The other one was sitting right next to the glass kinda lounging on his side. He has been in that same place the last couple of times I have been there.



Back at the end of June we went to the Riverwalk in Cayce and West Columbia. It was hot and we were both soaked by the time we left. For those of you not from around here, the Riverwalk is a park that is essentially a trail next to the Congaree River. There are trees along some of it (mostly in Cayce) and the trail goes under all the birdges going across to Columbia.

This is a mural under the Blossom St bridge.




This is a tree that was hanging out over the water. Here Shawn is with the tree.



Here I am with the tree.



Here is a picture of the river, and the rocks.



Here is a picture of the Gervias St bridge. In my opinion it is the coolest. It has the old timey light fixtures on it that have been restored.

New additions and such

There have been some new additions to the Gunter farm. Almost three weeks ago two new babies were born. Then this past week more new babies were born.

These were the first babies, both boys. This was the day after they were born.



These are the newest babies when they were about 4 days old.



This is a new gladiolus that started blooming this week.



This is the newest stray cat that has taken to eating our cat's food. She seems very friendly, even wanting to come inside. This is Jonathan holding her.



The baby recently got a new accessory, a high chair.



Then Shawn thought it would be a good idea to give him ice cream (he is not going to be doing that when we have kids, I can tell you that).



And the newest change for Junior is his lack of hair on the back of his head. It is kinda funny since the rest of his hair is so long.

Holiday Weekend

My dad has sold off many of our goats, including the billy goat (mainly because he was very mean to all the other goats). A few weeks later he went and bought a new billy goat. It is still pretty young and the other goats are treating him like he doesn't exist, or won't let him eat when they are around. Hopefully when he gets bigger he will become more confident and they will accept him as part of their herd. This is the new billy.



When I came to the fence to take his picture one of our other goats came to see if I was giving out food. They always expect to be fed when they see someone outside the house.



Then we had some tomato peels to feed the cows. They are pretty funny to watch coming to the fence because you can get them to run. If you have never seen a cow run, it is pretty funny. I have a video I'll try to upload on here of the first one that came running up.



This is the cow running at us.



This week we went to see Shawn's parents. While we were there I took more pictures of the baby. He just turned 4 months old and is fascinated with his feet. He also rolls over and pushes up off the ground (but still can't crawl). He can sit up for a few seconds, but still hasn't mastered that skill yet.



He gets in his walker and pushes around some (mostly going backwards). Shawn took his feet and started moving them to play with him in the walker.

Miscelaneous

We have had a couple wildlife experiences lately. One morning there was turtle outside next to the steps. The cat didn't really know what to make of it. She would sniff it and when her nose would touch it she would jump away. Then she would start sniffing it again.



Then on our way to his parents house we passed a snake crossing the road. We stopped because Shawn has never met a snake he didn't want to at least get a closer look at, much less touch. So he held the snakes tail and let him crawl away. It is the coolest looking snake I have seen in a while.



Then, we have been awaiting our pastor's retirement. Pastor Fowler has been at our church for just shy of 39 years. Other than when I was in college I have never had another pastor. Then I have had Mrs. Fowler as a Sunday school teacher since I graduated from high school. She has always been a wonderful friend to our family and thought of Shawn and I as her other children. So I wanted to at least make something for her, if not for the pastor also. So I made a shawl for her and a bookmark for him. Then the Friday before their last Sunday we had them over for dinner. They were here for over two hours just talking and eating. It was a great time of fun and fellowship.



This is us with Mrs. Fowler after church the next to last Sunday they were there. I am laughing because the pastor was behind my mom (who was taking the picture) making faces and sticking bunny ears up to the camera.



This is a picture of the pastor on his last Sunday. We didn't get the best picture, but there was a photographer there from the newspaper so we got a copy of the paper for the article and pictures. Then on the church newsletter there were some more pictures.



As I said, he has been at our church for a long time. Since before my parents had even gotten married. He knows both Shawn and I, and our families, and knew our grandparents. Him leaving our church was very hard because he and his wife felt like a part of our families. I hated to see them go, but he certainly deserves to have a nice retirement. We will sorely miss him and anticipate what the future holds for the church.

Flowers

The farther we get into Spring the more flowers I have blooming. It makes the yard look so much better.

This is the bed to the left of the steps. All the annuals I planted last year came back and I planted more coleus and two more elephant ears this year. The old elephant ears and the banana plant even multiplied. Now there are three of the big elephant ears, several of the red stemmed ones, and four banana plants.



Another plant I transplanted from my mom's graden last year was this gladiolus. It bloomed for the first time this week. I have some more glads that I planted this year that should be up in the next few weeks, but I don't know if they'll bloom this year.



My lilies have started blooming. We've had these since the summer before we got married. I had them in planters and transplanted them to the beds last summer. This is a blackbird lily.



This is a tiger lily. If blooms in a very nice orange. They have both multiplied tons since I've had them. I even gave two small ones to my mom last year.



In addition to the lilies we also had gerbera daisies in planters from our old house. We finally transplanted them this year. One is pink and the other is a light orange. They went in the bed on the side of the house.



We also have three tomatoes, two squash, and two cucumber plants. They have each grown a lot since we planted them. There are even tiny tomatoes already. We should have squash soon and maybe even cucumbers.

In other news, I am having to do without my allergy medicine because my doctor wants to retest me to see what new things I am allergic to. It has made for a miserable week. I look forward to being able to take my Zyrtec again. I've also had to stop my pills for preventing headaches because it somehow changes the way your body reacts to the tests. But it is good practice for when I have to stop them to try to get pregnant.

Speaking of which, my doctor's appointment had been changed and now I don't go for a few more weeks. It is frustrating because I want to start trying to get pregnant, but I also know my doctor wanted to know before we started trying (due to all the meds I will have to stop). On the plus side I haven't had as many headaches as I expected since stopping my meds. That is always a good thing.

So, our niece graduated from high school last weekend. It made me feel old. It was a bittersweet day for her because on the one hand she was graduating, but then on the other hand her mom wasn't here to see her graduate. I know that Sandy would have been so proud of her. Her grandmother from Walterboro came for the graduation and it was the first time she got to see Mercedez's baby. It was so cute.

Remodel job

Shawn and I (mainly Shawn) have been working on my mom's bathroom for a little over a month now. My parents have lived in the same house for almost 32 years and some things just need redoing. The bathroom had sustained water damage about 7 or 8 years ago and the work was only halfway done because the insurance company didn't want to actually pay what needed to be spent. So, a year and a half ago we had given my mom the new towel bars and flooring for Christmas, but had never gotten around to installing any of it because we were trying to figure out what to do with the sink and cabinet. To get an equivalent cabinet would cost a lot more money than anyone was willing to part with, so we decided to fix up the existing cabinet and my mom bought a new sink and faucet. We painted the cabinet, put in a new bottom to the cabinet (it had rotted away due to water damage), and put on new hardware. While installing the sink and faucet, Shawn added shut-off valves for the water because they had never been installed before (bad plumber way back when).

This is the sink once installed.



This is what the cabinet looked like with new paint and hardware.



We installed new wallboard to make the bath tub area look better. We also put in a new soap dish. In addition we re-caulked around the tub.



Then we put in the new towel bars, tp holder, and shower curtain rod. This is the double towel bar next to the tub. There is also a towel bar over the toilet.



My mom decided the lovely 70's era light was not making things look good anymore and bought a new light fixture. We discovered bad electricians work (the light box was barely attached to anything so we put in a new one, not fun) and installed the new light after lots of trial and error.



Then after the new paint job and all other work was done we put in the new flooring and shoe molding. Then the new shoe molding got painted.



This is a shot of most of the work from the doorway.



This is a straight on shot from the door.



We also painted the door and door casing to make them look like the rest of the room. Then we painted the frame for the mirrored medicine cabinet. All in all, it looks like a completely different room that doesn't look anything like the rest of the house.

More Spring Things

The Gunter farm has had lots of babies born this year. For the first time, we have had lots of incidents with the new babies. The new calf poked his eye on a tree branch and needed eye drops to fight away infection. We are pretty sure it will be blind in that eye, but he is doing much better.

Then a baby goat that was about 3 months old was eating some food when the oldest billy goat came up and swung his head around to shoo the baby away. Unfortunately, his long horns caught the baby goat's leg and the baby ended up being picked up and swung around. He ended up with a broken leg and limped around for a few weeks. Now you can hardly tell him from the other baby goats.

So, the baby goat that was born on Easter had an injury as well. My dad has tin laying around that he uses to cover the wood piles for the fire place. The goats like to walk around on the tin and we think the baby walked on part that had a hole and scraped his back leg. At any rate, he had the top layer of skin taken off from right above his hoof. So he was doctored on a lot and now is doing better and will walk on that leg.




While all this doctoring was going on with that baby, another goat had a baby. This makes the third black baby we've had, which is cool, we just don't know where that color is coming from. The majority of the other goats have had cream colored babies that either turned white, or a dark tan color. So the black babies have made things interesting.



In other news, our rose bush has gone crazy. This is after a storm that made lots of petals fly away. The funny thing about this rose bush is that the blooms are so many different colors. Some are dark pink with yellow centers. Some are light pink with white centers. Some look almost red at first and fade to pink. Some have a center that starts out orange and turns yellow.



Then finally, my yellow irises have bloomed. They have much bolder color than the purple ones.



Most of the irises have finished blooming, so this will probably be the last picture that will feature them.



We've planted out veggies so when they start growing bigger I'll post pictures of them. I've also planted more flowers in the front and have more stuff to put out. Pictures of that will follow soon as well.

Spring Time

Spring is here, and with it comes all sorts of new things. Those of you that haven't already heard, I was given a bunch of irises last year that used to belong to my grandmother. My mom was never able to actually get them to bloom so she wanted to see if I could get them to bloom. So last year they didn't do anything, but they multiplied like crazy. This year they started shooting up buds. I've taken lots of pictures over the last few days.

This is the first two irises that started to put out buds.



This was after two had opened up. They turned out to be purple. Most of the others are going to be purple, but there are two that look like they are going to be yellow. I'm very excited.



This is my rose bush my dad gave me not that long after we moved in. It was the first plant we actually planted. I haven't really taken care of it the way you are supposed to take care of roses (they are famous for being picky and hard to care for), but the thing just keeps growing and getting bigger and putting on more and more blooms. This is one bloom that had just opened up a little and was very pretty.



Then on Easter day there was a birth on the Gunter farm. One more baby goat was born. It is a very cute little goat too. Here it is trying to find milk, which I definitely don't have.



A few weeks ago another calf was born. It is very mellow and will let us walk up to it and pet it. So half the time he lays around looking like it is dead, which is alarming until you start petting him and he obviously loves being petted. This is his mom and his "babysitter" checking him out after we petted him.



This is the baby before we started petting him. See, he really does look dead.



On the sadder side of things, he seems to have somehow stumbled around and poked his eye with a branch or something. So it seems that he will be blind in one eye, but he is getting around ok with the one good eye and is growing and seems healthy otherwise. And he is so soft and cute! Spring babies are the best part of Spring.