Granddaughters visit again

Because their last visit with us was so short, Caitlyn and Danica stayed with us again this past weekend before Grandma has to start back to work on Wednesday. Caitlyn is a very interesting and intelligent "old" 4-year-old. She saw buckets of bubblegum at the store and asked, "Grandma, why does that say 'Double Bubble'?" She likes to play "imagination" which varies greatly depending on what her imagination conjures up. And she like to play "I Spy" during car rides. When she wants to tell you -- just you -- something, she'll say, "Give me your ear." When you bend down to her, she will hold your ear while whispering the information.
Danica will be 18 months old on the 21st and is very inquisitive. . . you know - into everything. She jabbers in her own language and when she smiles, you melt. The girls went to church with us Sunday for the entire 3-hr block. Both were well-behaved. Danica easily went into Nursery but I had to go with Caitlyn to Primary for the first 10 minutes until she saw what it was all about and felt comfortable staying there on her own. During the welcome visitor song, she helped lead the music and got to be a helper during sharing time. On the way home after church, Caitlyn said the next time they came for a long visit she wanted to go to church again. After church, Caitlyn had fun playing with Great-grandma who was a real sport in allowing Caitlyn to squirt her with a squirt gun. The G-G had Danica laughing while playing with her. Danica has the cutest laugh.
Check out the other photos taken of their visit plus a few from Margo's last Saturday with us at
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=18s0ijij.cifgprv7&x=1&h=1&y=hxj7es&localeid=en_US

Dark clouds rolled in and threatened rain. The clouds pictured here didn't give us any but we received quite a bit later that evening. Because these clouds dumped heavy rain to the east of us, during the night our wash flooded again but not too bad. We currently have a lot of standing water in the wash right behind our house so hopefully the mosquitoes won't get too bad. If you take garlic supplements (hey nephews - remember the Yellowstone trip?) it is suppose to ward off the little blood-suckers.
Rod went out at about 9:00 to see how hard it was raining and found a common desert-dweller next to our front porch.

Behold -- a young rattlesnake. Out came the shovel and -- CHOP! There was also a large toad near the house under the bug zapper but I didn't get a good pic of it. They like to eat the "fried" bugs that fall to the ground. These Colorado River toads only come out from underground when it rains heavily and then we get to hear the loud croaking chorus. It can get quite loud. Some of them can get quite large - about 8 inches in diameter.