VINS

We visited VINS last week. Our library has tickets to take out like books for some neat places within our area and we wanted to take advantage of going here. We saw lots of different kinds of raptors and went on a hike (before it started to rain..)
Here is the bald headed eagle! Isn't he fantastic??

A pretty snowy owl. Some of these guys were hit by cars etc and all of them were injured so they could no longer fly and fend for themselves.

We attended the live bird show. This girl (I can't remember which kind of raptor she was..) loved to get sprayed with a water bottle.

Our favorite during the live bird show was this little raptor. He's called an American Kestrel. (falcon family)This little guy was so noisy. He was chirping like crazy for food! We learned that someone found him as a little fledgling and then was placed in a cage and kept as a pet, so he never learned to hunt for himself (and never will at this point)and he begs like crazy when people are around. We all thought he was cute though!

A"barred" owl (for it's markings). The man was saying that their eyes are huge for it's body in order to find it's prey. The eyes and ears are essential for hunting. He had us make our hands into fists and said that if we were owls, our eyes would be that big.

We hiked on a trail around the property at VINS. We came across this tee pee

(which may be a class project or something, we weren't sure. It was pretty neat though!)Eric and the kids were running around inside of it.

Taking a break

Charlie Ray

A new baby "Charlie Ray" was born while we were in NY. (it's so funny he was named that.. my Dad has a buddy he was in the army with named Charlie Ray. I'll have to send him a picture!!) Isn't he cute? Feeding him is now Sarah's job on nights that we help at the barn. I have more pictures of an outing we took a couple of days ago, but I will sign off for now to be safe. There is a big thunderstorm coming our way at the moment!

I like Milk....

ponies

Sarah's friend Shannon has a close family member who has a few ponies. She gets to ride the brown one pretty often and she had Sarah over today to ride too. Sarah had a blast! These two white ones are Mommy and baby ("baby" is 8 though!)

Shannie on princey

Sarah trotting bareback. She was so proud of herself!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful friend Jenny B.

Today is also her and her husband Brad's anniversary! Have a wonderful day you two!

We miss you!!

Uncle Ray and Aunt Patty let us borrow one of their mandolins. (an instrument I have always liked the sound of). We are trying to teach ourselves (so far successfully!). Here is Sarah practicing her open strings.

We went to my friend Erin's family cottages on the river for her son's birthday party while in NY. Here is Grant with his Daddy pushing him on his new 4 wheeler!

It was a cold afternoon..(thanks AJ!)

A neat picture of Grant (a 4th of July baby! ) holding the American flag with Mom looking on.

Hugging Papa

saying goodbye to Uncle Randy and family

We stopped in the Adirondacks at the cemetery near the Mineville/Moriah area (where my parents grew up). A lot of my ancestors are buried there and my grandparents on both sides. This is my great-great grandparents grave (on my mom's mom side.. whew!, it took a minute to figure that out!).

A hugs tailings pile (waste) from the old iron-ore mines that have long been closed. (pic taken from the cemetery) There is still some old equipment at the top. (we stopped here after tupper lake.. I uploaded in the wrong order yet again)

The ride home... (she makes a good pillow!) Here is Tupper Lake. Here is Eric tyring to coax Sally into the water (she's never liked water very much!). He's enticing her with the ducks floating out there.. she sees them and is watching, but she's thinking it's not worth it!

Jumping over the waves.

animal pics!

We went to visit Grandma and Grandpa P. yesterday. (I have pictures of Gram, but I did not get them downloaded yet..! I'll upload those next time.) Christian plays with Wish-cat a lot. Gram and Grandpa got her from a petshop in NH when they came to visit us. She's a sweetie.
Sarah by Grandma's HUGE smoke-mist tree


We spent a good three hours at the barn where Gram keeps her horse. Here is Copper, who belongs to the stable owners daughter, Rina. He kept yawning and sticking his tongue out.

Copper getting attention.

Gram's horse, Romi

Chips, a boarder

I uploaded these backwards.. here is Sarah saying "good ride Jakey". She rides Jake each time we visit. He's a Tennesee walker/paso-fino cross.

Melinda, Jake's owner (and sister to Rina)cooling him off after the ride. Sarah and I both rode, he was pretty tired!

Sarah on Jake. Gram even dug out and english saddle! (Sarah's favorite)

Jogging

Sarah leading Sandy, Rina's other horse

Rina and Sandy

Some trip pictures

We are in NY visiting family and friends and here are some pictures I took so far.. more to come! We brought Sally along with us.. here she is in the truck on the way over! (we couldn't leave Sally behind!!!:) )
Sarah (with Roscoe running along) riding the 4 wheeler at Uncle Ray and Aunt Patty's house.

Uncle Ray and crew singing bluegrass!

Uncle Ray brought us to see some goats. This is "Billy" the goat that Sarah is feeding

My great-neice Leaha came along too

The goats are kept near a museum that I remember going to for field trips as a child. The man there opened up the exhibits for us to peek in. It was an unexpected surprise to get to see all of the great artifacts that I hadn't seen in years. Sarah thought it was pretty neat too!

An old truck from 1919

Sarah liked the cash register

We went into the one room school-house. Yes, I had to be the dunce.... Sarah didn't want to go first

She was more willing after Mom did it.

She's the teacher here!

Uncle Ray and Leaha the students.

They had stilts and hoops to play with for recess time back then apparently... Uncle Ray gave it a try. (hehe) Sarah wasn't so sure.

Pumpin' water!

We got to go visit my pal Jenny and her family! Here I am with Emmeline and the newest addition to their family Margie. It was so nice to snuggle with those cute babies! :) Emmy especially liked to come and sit on my lap during the visit. What a sweetie.

Our kids. We take an annual picture of them all together. This year there is one more! I tried to save the picture from last year to compare..but I don't know how to paste it on here.. so now it's gone!! (I have a copy at home, but I risked tyring something new here at Mom's and it didn't work for me..) I wanted to see the two pictures to compare how they've changed. WOW.. this update took minutes to complete! I will post more before we head home to NH!