Happy Armed Forces Day!

Greetings to all and hello, everyone!  It's us, Mags and Cam.  Today we would like to wish all of those who are serving or who have served honorably in our nation's military a very happy Armed Forces Day!

"Do your War Face, Cam!"
"This is my War Face!"

While we might be a bit partial to the US Army, this goes out to all of you who serve or who have served honorably in our Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard - we appreciate you, we honor you, and we pray for you!

Mags and Cam

Flower Friday - The Peonies Edition!

Greetings to all!  It's me, Maggie, joining with Da DB Boyz to bring you Flower Friday!  This week, our post is all about our Peonies!  Let's head out and see how they're doing!

I checked in on this one a couple days ago:

"Looking good, but not in full bloom yet, Mom!"

Fortunately, there were other blooms that were fully open! Check them out:

We waited a couple days, then checked on that first Peony again -- look at it now!

"Yeah!  Nice and fluffy!"

We like things fluffy around here!

The Peonies we showed you last week were lighter pink, but "singles".  They always open first.  Some of our fuller ones are also lighter pink, like this one:

Mom started all of them from roots a friend gave her, so we don't know what variety any of them are; we just call them "Skidmore" Peonies!

Thanks for joining us - please check out the other Flower Friday blogs out there!

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Thatcher

Our Little Secret

Hello, everyone!  It's me, Cammie.  The other morning, Dad took Maggie out for some special Daddy-Daughter Time, so Mom and I did something special, too!  We chose to do something I can't really do when Maggie is around -- play with Pink Pig!

"Please don't let Maggie know about this!"

For a reminder of why Maggie must not know about me playing with Pink Pig, please click here. Seriously. Pink Pig's very life depends on it.

It's our little secret ... right?

Cammie!

Wordless Wednesday

Cam and Mags

USA! USA!! USA!!!

Hello, everyone!  It's me, Cammie!  Yesterday, we got the very sweetest gift in the mail from our Auntie Donna!!  It was a set of three beautiful embroidered USA mini-quilts!  She made them just for us!  (... and for our mom and dad.). Look at how pretty they are:

"How's this, Mom?"
"Let's pose nice for Auntie Donna!"

They were designed to hang on those little metal hangers -- she sent us those when she sent us a lovely Christmas "JOY" set that she also made! Isn't she super talented?!?!

Oh, right. Why were we so willing to pose so nicely? What if I told you it's because Mags and I are really good girls?

Wait! No! No need to pan out a bit, Mom! Oh, fine. Here:

"Those are Nutros!  I can tell!"
"Oh. My.  GOODNESS!  We LOVE those!"

Well, yeah.  She also enclosed a bag of Nutro cookies!  See them at the top of the shot there?  She knows us soooooo well!

Thank you from all four of us! We just love the USA mini-quilts -- and the cookies!!!

Cammie!

Fur-Nado!

Hello, everyone!  It's me, Cammie!  Yesterday, Maggie and I got to have baths!  What's nice is, since Mom got our own dryer, we don't have to go to that Dog Wash place -- we can do it all at home!  I went first and ...

"Oh, did that feel good!"

Note the blue towel back there. I was supposed to sit on it. I didn't want to.

"Thanks for the bath and fluffing, Mom!" 

I mean, sure - I was a gem for the bath (in our shower) and the blow-dry, but sit on the towel?  No!  I didn't want to!  I can't make it too easy for Mom -- right?

Maggie went next. Maggie is blowing coat right now, so she really let the fur fly! Mom took a short video; let's take a look!

To watch on YouTube, please click here!

Wasn't that fun?!!? Maggie had quite the fur-nado going!

Here's how nice she looked afterwards:

"Yeah, 'nice', whatever.  Are the neighbors out?"

She was very good for Mom, too.  And I'm sure she enjoyed it and feels even better now, right, Maggie?

"Riiiiiiiiight.  Here, get my brown-eyed side."

It feels so nice to be all clean and super-fluffy!   ...even if we did cause a fur-nado!

Cammie!

Serene Scenery Sunday

Greetings to all!  It's me, Maggie!  We were so late in posting yesterday that I wasn't sure what we were going to blog about today - then Mom said, "Hey, let's go out front and take some nice Peony pix!"  I didn't listen to much after the "let's go" part, but that's another story.

And, actually ... we don't have any Peony pix to share with you - but we did shoot a video that should explain things.  Ready to take a look?  Roll it!

To watch on YouTube, please click here

Yeah.  It's pretty Kansas-y out there today.  Hard to focus that camera on flowers blowing around!  Still - that breeze is mighty serene!

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Thatcher

PS:  Yes, we went birding again yesterday!  We'll have cool birdie photos to share later in the week!

Let's Just Say We've ...

GONE BIRDING!

Mags and Cam

Flower Friday

Greetings to all!  It's me, Maggie!  We are teaming up with Da DB Boyz to bring you Flower Friday! We thought we'd take a walk around our gardens right here at Ao4 Headquarters this week -- ready to take a look at what's in bloom?

Let's start things off with a shot of me looking at the Peonies:

Me checking out the Peonies.
Well, fine.  I was looking at some guys next door.  Whatever.

Or rather a shot of me not looking at the Peonies. Whatever. There was too much going on out there! Anyway, here are some of our Peonies! First, a couple shot with Mom's iPhone:

And now with the Canon 7D:

Mom just can't get enough of her Peonies!

The Purple Salvia is blooming, too:

And so are the Roses:

Rosebud with some kind of Gaussian blur thingie.  I have no idea.

Our other big bloomers right now are our Irises! We have purple ones:

And this color-combo:

What's blooming in your neck of the woods?

Thanks for joining us on our garden tour!  

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Thatcher

Getting Our Ducks In A Row

... or at least the photos of them. And the other birds.  Anyway ...

Greetings to all!  It's me, Mags.  Today, we finally have Mom's birdie pix from our outing on Saturday.  Are you ready to head down to Quivira National Wildlife Refuge?  Let's cut with the chit-chat and go!

Me and Cam at Quivira, checking out the scene!

OK, I wasn't really looking for birdies, I was quite possibly looking for something to snarf. That didn't really pay off.  We did see tons of birdies, though!

One of the most abundant kinds of birds we saw were Blackbirds!

Red-Winged Blackbird

Yellow-Headed Blackbird, trying to hide from Mom

There were quite a few species of ducks there, to include Mom's favorite - the Northern Shoveler.  Here's one hanging out with some friends:

Left to right, female and male Blue-Winged Teal and a male Northern Shoveler

I'm fairly certain the female Blue-Winged Teal was practicing her aircraft carrier landings!

Here's a very small duck:

Male Ruddy Duck

We also saw lots of Egrets!  On the way down, Mom saw some Cattle Egrets in a field with some cattle!  For some reason, she didn't get any photos.  Something about Dad not thinking it's real safe to pull over when he's doing 75mph down the highway.  Whatever.  At Quivira, we saw a few Snowy Egrets and plenty of Great Egrets:

Great Egret in flight

Aren't his wings beautiful?  Let's have a good look at those babies:

Great Egret - wingspan of 51 inches!

With an even larger wingspan of 72 inches, we give you the Great Blue Heron:

Great Blue Heron doing some fishing

We also saw another kind of heron!

Immature Black-Crowned Night Heron

I'm not sure why Mom said he was immature -- maybe he was cracking goofy jokes or something.  Ha roo roo r---yeah, OK, back to the birds!

In the smaller birdies arena we have ...

Eastern Meadowlark

... and ...

Eastern Kingbird

Back to larger birds ... Mom is always thrilled to see these guys:

White-Faced Ibis, with a Lesser Yellowlegs photo-bombing (at right)

Mom didn't even see the Yellowlegs at first.  Some of these birdies have amazing camouflage!

We also saw Kansas' largest bird:

American White Pelican

They have a wingspan of 108 inches!  Wowzers!

We appreciate your kind comments on the video we shared yesterday of the Phalarope and Stilt -- and thought you might like to see some still shots today!

Wilson's Phalarope

Unlike most other birds, the female Wilson's Phalarope (above) is the more colorful of the species!  Here are a male and female together:

Male and female Wilson's Phalaropes

If you notice all the tiny, black specks in the two photos above - those are mosquitoes.  About 87 billion of them.  The rest of the 10 billion that were there were biting Mom, if she's to be believed.  (Side note - in a pinch, hand sanitizer is great for itchy bug bites!)

And here is a shot of one of the Stilts:

Black-Necked Stilt

Aren't his crazy-red legs cool? They have the second-longest legs in proportion to their bodies of any bird; flamingos are number one.

Our last shot for you is of a bird that is a "lifer" (first time ever seeing one) for Mom:

American Bittern!

They are a member of the heron family and are very elusive -- see how well-camouflaged he is in the grasses?!?  Mom almost missed him!

We hope you enjoyed our birdie pictures!  If you'd like to see more photos from this most recent trip, please click here to visit our FlickR album (it's a 2-pager).  Thanks for going birdie watching with us!

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Thatcher

Watching Wednesday

Greetings to all!  It's me, Maggie.  This Wednesday, I thought we'd do a little movie watching.  Me?  I've been watching The Last Kingdom --

"Uhtred!  It's Uhtred!"

I don't have any clips of that show to share with you, but I CAN get you started on our birding adventure with a very short video!  Roll it, Mom!

To watch on YouTube, please click here.

Both of those kinds of birdies (Wilson's Phalaropes and Black-Necked Stilts) are exciting "finds" here in Kansas, so Mom was really stoked to see them out dining together!

Mom shot that with the Canon SX60, handheld. She's been working very hard with the occupational therapy guys - can you tell it's paying off?!?

Birdie pix starting tomorrow!

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Thatcher

Waiting ...

Hello, everyone!  It's me, Cammie.  We're still waiting for our mom to finish going through the birdie pix she took the other day.

"Ho-hum."

I think she took 87 million, but I'm not sure. It was a lot.

Cammie!

Working On It!

Greetings to all!  It's me, Maggie!  Mom is still working on her birdie photos from Saturday.  I'm helping, of course -- you know, doing things like helping with the ID, making sure she stops to take me outside every so often, or getting her to fill our Pickles up so Cam and I can play.  But anyway ... she's working on it.  In the meantime ...

Sunday, we headed out on a nice family walk.  We went up the big hill, then stopped to strike a pose at that Old Chicago place.  While we were posing, Cam and I noticed something very interesting!

"I think that new coffee shop is open!"
"It has to be!  There are people on the patio!"

Isn't that cool?  We have a new coffee shop right in the neighborhood!  We thought we should go over, order some drinks, and welcome them!

Dad ordered some stuff while we made ourselves at home on the patio.  It was sunny and mighty warm, but there were people to meet, and that made it GREAT!  We love schmoozing people!  The manager was very nice and we hope to make this a regular stop!

After coffee, we posed for pictures!

"The sun's in my eyes, Mom."
"Do you have treats?"

We posted that one to their FaceBook page.  We also switched sides, to see how that would look:

"Seriously?  Do we get the treats now?"
"OK!  Big smiles!"

That was mighty fun.  I think we're going to like having a coffee shop on one of our walking routes!  Next time, I think I'll try ordering a double shot of espresso - wouldn't that be great?!?!

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Thatcher

Let's Bird!

Is "bird" a verb?  Hmm...

Hello, everyone!  It's me, Cammie!  As Maggie mentioned yesterday, we headed out on a day-trip to go birding!  We went to Mom's happy place -- Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, stopping at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center on the way out and back.  It was a very fun trip for all of us, but we're also pretty wiped out, so today I'm just sharing iPhone pix with you - later in the week, we'll show you the cool birdies we saw!

Here is a shot of Maggie and me on the way down:

"Zzz..."
"Zzz..."

As you can see, we were hard at work.

When we got to the Kansas Wetlands Ed Center, we got to walk around for a while. We struck a nice pose for Mom:

Me and the Peep at the Ed Center

After that, we headed over to Quivira! We saw lots of birdies, and Mom was going crazy taking photos (being careful not to over-stress her wrists). When we got to the Big Salt Marsh (BSM), us girls got out to help spot birdies:

"I think I see ducks over across the street!  Wait ... no.  Coots!  I see Coots!"
"Are they old Coots?  Ha roo woo roo!"

Mom fired off a couple shots, then she and I went over by the BSM to look around.  I struck a pose over on the parking pad:

"Old Coots.  I crack myself up!"

It was pretty warm, so we also had a water break (and some snacks!) while we were there.

We drove around Quivira NWR some more, then headed back to the Wetlands Ed Center.

"Siberian pose on 3, Cam!  One ... two ..."
"Three!"

That was fun.

After we all stretched our legs a bit, it was time to head home.

"Hey, Dad.  If you're tired, I'm OK to drive."

Maggie is really helpful like that.  Dad said he was good to go, so we just hung out in the backseat and played the license plate game.  I think Mom found the most states, but she was in the front seat, so she had a bit of an advantage.

A great time was had by all!  More to come very soon!

Cammie!