Avoiding a Hummingbird Around Our Necks

I usually open our bedroom windows at night. And then Mike often wakes and shuts them. Some cow mooing excessively, a sandhill crane's calling back and forth, magpies (no further clarification needed), or a sudden fierce rainstorm urging him to action. (The sudden rainstorms though! They are a part of our life up here. Something to do with the shape of our valley? The slope of ... our mountains? I'm not sure. Rarely forecast, generally at night, and often enough for me to say they happen ... regularly! It's glorious.)

But, back to windows open at night. The last two mornings I have woken up cold! The daytimes have still been miserably hot, but morning temperatures cool enough for me to be cold? Surely that is a sign that fall is on its way! (Maybe the cold came in response to my having purchased a fall candle? Or Megan having given my kids Halloween blankets? [Or possibly the temperature hasn't cooled at all and it is only the fact that Mike has been out of town. And I unused to someone not closing the windows in the middle of the night.])

And now:

Starling and her cats. (Technically Shasta belongs to Goldie and Biscuit to us all [and none of us--wanderer that he is], but in many ways, they are Starling's cats. She is often asking us to come look at some cute thing they are doing [like lying there doing nothing] and going outside just to spend time with them.

Last night here was her prattling as she gave Shasta her attentions:

"Mom, Shasta is my favorite cat."

"Do you see him lying down? Do you see him? Do you?"

"Mom, does Shasta like tummy rubs?"

"Shasta has a striped tail."

"I think Shasta loves me."

I think so too. Sweet little human. 

And Daisy has been back at needle felting. She made a cat for Starling and a goblin shark for Hans.

And, she says she isn't finished, but look at this lovely little maid (a Scottish water kelpie probably):

And Abe, having been booted from his Provo summer apartment ten days before he can technically move into his fall apartment, is back home with us. Always a happy shift in the dynamics of our family when he is here. (Though one might not know it from the hold he has Jesse in below.)

And my flocks of white-faced ibis are back! (There is nothing remotely white about their faces however. No matter what the online pictures clearly show.) They are so fun to see in great flocks on all the fields and flying overhead. I can't believe I'd never seen them once living just 45 minutes away.

I can't recall what we were saying that spurred this remark, but while we were watching the hummingbirds at our feeder tonight, Mike suggested we might catch one in a jar. There was then a conversation that went something like this:

Me: You can't catch hummingbirds. That would be like putting a fairy in a jar.

Abe: Like Captain Hook.

Me: See? That's the kind of person that would capture a hummingbird.

And then Mike or Abe said how you would likely end up like the mariner with the albatross around his neck.

Me: Well ... at least it would be lighter.

And we all had a good laugh at the thought of the 2 oz burden.

But no. We shall not harm a hummingbird. They will always be a sign of my dad's continued awareness and involvement in our lives. (But he would have chuckled at our conversation as well.)

Look at this cute puzzle Hansie boy made.

And us at a rainy Pioneer Day parade in Mendon. (It was a noon parade. At the end of July. This rain was a wonderful substitute for the 100-degree days we'd been getting!):

Lastly ... we had about twenty of these floating about our house after my kids made ample use of the photo booth at their cousin Connor's wedding. (Parents should have intervened. And might have ... had they realized just how freely their children were using it.) They slowly seem to be disappearing (the photos, not the children who were using the photo booth), but I thought I'd include a few here before they are gone forever:

And some tired little people to end with:

Oh, and this cute boy who I adore: