2010 - January 4

Because of the insane amount of snow and cold Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we had to be a little creative and get with family when we could. All in all, it turned out to be a very pleasant holiday.

I love this photo! My sons dog was just exhausted watching him open presents! LOL

2010 - January 3

One of the things I had to adjust to over here is that there are no hills. I used to love taking my kids out in the mountains to well known sledding hills that would leave you absolutely exhausted after two trips down and then back up again! Here, Fargo is so flat! They have made several little hills for the kids to slide down on :)

2010 - January 2

This is really a sidewalk! LOL This is after 24 hours of snow!

2010 = January 1

A new year is here! I kind of dropped the ball on my 365 Photo A Day adventure last year. No promises this year, but I'm going to try it again! We got so much snow Christmas day! The drifts were several feet deep everywhere. The little 'hill' she is climbing is just snow that has blown and piled next to the car! BRRR

June 6 - River (152/365 or is it 158/365? lol)

The rivers around here always surprise me. I grew up around fast running, ice cold and clear rivers and lakes. In this area the rivers are a muddy brown and very slow moving. Usually, I try to avoid taking photos of the river because it is so brown and dirty. People tend to comment on my photo colors being off as the water isn't blue. I saw this little bend in the river and it called to me, so here it is. What do you think?

June 5 - Turtle

As I've shared before, we have a lot of ponds and standing water around here. We also have a lot of turtles and frogs.

This little guy watched me intently as I walked around the bank to get a better photo. He really made me laugh. After I took the photo, he silently slipped into the water and vanished.

June 4 - Conk

I believe this fungus is called a conk. It's actually the sign of ill health for a tree. I've known many artists that collect conks, dry them and then paint on them.

In the Rocky Mountains I have seen these conks get amazingly large.

June 3 - Cardinals

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, there is so much wildlife around here! It is mind boggling. The more I look for it, the more I find :)

I'm not much for ornithology and this blog has really shown me how much I don't know! I think these are cardinals.

I find it so peaceful to be out with my camera. The only really bad thing is that being out with all of the trees and creatures also means I'm out where there are ticks. After this hike I found several climbing on me. Thankfully, none had bitten or anything. They were just wandering around and holding on to my clothes. Such disgusting little creatures. Gotta take the bad with the fabulous I guess. I've been around them all my life and they haven't kept me home yet.

June 2 - Pelican Rapids

I thought for sure I would find pelicans at Pelican Rapids. I was wrong. Normally this water is not over the feet of the statue, however, with all of the flooding, the water was still pretty high.

The next morning I ran down to my favorite coffee shop (Ristreto's) and I could NOT believe it when a pelican flew right in front of me and landed in the pond near my house! Of course I didn't have my camera with me on my latte run! ugghhh

June 1 - Blue Heron

I'm not sure what this bird is. It was a ways away and held very, very still while I was trying to get this photo. My husband and I went to Maplewood State Park in Minnesota and that's where I found this guy. When he was tired of me, he was gone in a flash! So quick, I didn't even get a photo of it in flight!

If you know what type of bird this is, please let me know. At first I called it a Blue Heron, but then I couldn't find any photos of Blue Herons that looked just like this guy.

Thank you CBGD for posting the comment and link :) Now I know.

May 30 - Dragonfly!

I came across a field of dragonflies! There must've been thousands of them flitting all over the place. Every time I barely moved, they all lifted in flight! It was VERY difficult getting a photo! Thankfully, I have a fantastic zoom lens!

I spent more than half an hour just sitting there watching those beautiful creatures flit here and there :)

There were several types there too! I didn't get any photos of the other blue ones with round bodies. They were just way too fast and way too busy!

May 29 - LOVE spring colors!

Not sure what kind of bird this is, but I love this photo!

May 28 - We went to the park

We went to the park tonight and roasted beef franks. After we ate, the boys went out and tossed the baseball. We went to the park last weekend too. Skyler could not catch that ball! He was pretty scared of it and spent a whole lot of time chasing it down.

Today when his dad tossed it to him, he caught it more often than not! My oldest son and daughter joined us. What a gorgeous day! The sun was shining and there was a nice light wind blowing. We did see one skeeter while there. Not sure how many we didn't see.

Skyler ran and ran and ran. At one point he got my son, Mark, to chase him. Mark has been able to run lighting fast since he learned to walk. Skyler got to giggling so hard all he could do was fall to the ground in surrender! As you can see, there were lots of trees to hide behind and have fun with.

He comes back from his moms for the weekend of Fathers Day. He's already asked if we can go to the park and go fishing! LOL

May 27 - tiny ducklings! (I'm all caught up!!)

Awwww how cute are they??!!

Look at those tiny little babies! I mentioned before how many ducks and geese there are this year, and there usually are. However, this year there seems to be twice as many as usual!

Whew, I got a bit behind on my photo a day blog, but spent the time and got it all caught up.

I will try to get over and post on the other blogs over the weekend.

May 26 - Recipe Album

This is the project I made with my scrapbooking group last week. We make 6x6 recipe layouts and then exchange/swap them. I didn't know what to do with all of the layouts.

I made these fun little albums to hold the recipe layouts. To see more examples and the instructions, visit my scrapbooking blog.