New blog setup!

Hi again!
Well, you may notice the page looks different. I've changed to a different blog format (courtesy of http://www.blogger.com). It lets people easily add comments after a post, or email a link to a friend. If anyone has been considering setting up their own blog, I would HIGHLY recommend blogger.com. It's free, and incredibly easy to set up and use. They have a bunch of predesigned templates to choose from. It rocks!!! I'm also adding a new page of Fun Stuff for when you need a little diversion from work. :)

Things here are a little crazy right now. We're packing getting ready to go on vacation(!!!) Tuesday. After more than a month straight of 100+ degree Oklahoma heat, spending a week on the Olympic Penninsula visiting my family sounds just heavenly. 75-degree days... 50-degree nights... Sweater weather!! This week a plastic drink cup left in my car MELTED. Even the kids are saying they may not want to come back. This will be the first time the kids have left Oklahoma, their first time on a plane, and first time going to the ocean! So you can imagine how excited we all are.

The summer heat has been really tough on all of us here--even the tough-as-nails Oklahoma trees here are starting to wilt. I've been trying to keep my birdfeeders and birdbaths stocked with fresh food and water. Even though they're not eating as much, the birds still come several times a day for the water. It seems to be helping--this morning when I woke up there were several types of birds feeding in the backyard, plus a baby cottontail bunny hopping around between them. The whole thing was like a scene out of "Snow White". :) By now almost all the birds have fledged their young, so the birdfeeder traffic has slowed down to tired bird parents. It was hilarious to see them bring their "teenage" birds to the feeder. The teenager follows the parent around with mouth open and wings flapping, squawking as loud and fast as possible. The parents try to cram as much food as possible down the teenager's throat, while taking a little bite for themselves here & there. Sound familiar?!

Yesterday morning we had a crazy hummingbird encounter. I'd never hung up a hummingbird feeder because i'd never seen one in our neighborhood. Alan and I were sitting on the back porch drinking our coffee. A hummingbird flew up and checked out each of the bird feeders one by one. Then he flew up to the eave of the house right where we were sitting, and stared at it, hovering. Then he flew down even closer to us, and hovered looking Alan right in the eye for a good 10 seconds, as if to say "Where's mine?" Alan said he froze up & wondering if the hummingbird was going to swoop in and poke him in the eye. It was so cool!!!! I've never hummer investigate me quite so curiously. Needless to say, the feeder was up within the hour! Alan said he came back several times this morning, and even perched & rested for awhile on the feeder. My best guess is it's a female ruby-throated hummingbird:

Btw, hummingbirds are the rock stars of the bird world, and have loads of groupies dedicated to following their every move. Check out http://www.hummingbirds.net/index.html for everything in the world you could want to know about these birds!

The other exciting news is, there is a toad visiting my toadhouse!!! I put out toadhouses when I started this backyard wildlife habitat in June. Since then i've left them alone, resisted the urge to peek inside, and let the plants grow up around them. Lo and behold, when I went outside the other morning, there was a toad there! He looked something like this:



Check out this info on making a toad house (did I mention they eat bugs & are good for your garden???). Here's some info on cool toad projects to do with kids. Take care & I look forward to posting more soon!

xoxo,

Layla