Bunny Boy

Mary took advantage of a local mom’s offer of pics with baby bunnies for Easter. 

Can you tell how thrilled Donovan is?

He was sooooo gentle. 

Love this handsome guy.

Bread Day

We loooooooove fresh baked bread 

but I’m not very good at timing the mixing and rising(s) and baking to have it ready at a specific time, so it’s mostly a special treat, not an everyday staple.

Then I saw this . . .

 
The idea is to mix a big batch of dough and let it rise in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, pulling off a section as needed to make bread. 

Mixing the first batch took about 20 minutes, then it needed to rise for 2 hours before I could pull off a grapefruit-sized section to bake. The rest is in the fridge, rising again, ready for me to grab another hunk tomorrow -or whenever- to shape and bake.

Delicious! And unlike sourdough, this doesn’t need to be “fed” every day to keep it going. Maybe next time we’ll make pita . . . or challah . . . or baguettes . . . or . . . This is going to be so much fun!

Pretty Kitty

Lily seems to have decided that the baby grands are tolerable.

She allowed Donovan to pet her repeatedly 

and let Jac walk up and pet her without me there (a first). 

Needless to say, the littles are thrilled. Lily still hides from them most of the time but I love seeing her mellow in her middle age. 

Whales, Ahoy!

Our original plan - a whale watching cruise scheduled for last week - was canceled for weather. Yesterday so was cloudy and windy we were worried today’s reschedule might suffer the same fate but, despite the wind, we were a “go”. 

The ocean was a bit rough, especially when we first got out of the harbor -

Leia couldn’t stop laughing as the boat repeatedly ’caught air’ and splashed back down, spraying her with water - but it settled down the further out we went. 

Our first sighting was a minke whale in the distance. 

We also followed a pair of juvenile gray whales for awhile,

watching as they breached about every 5 minutes.

They stayed a fair distance from the boat, spouting off and showing just a bit of skin,

until finally! we were rewarded with a fluke flip as they headed down to deeper water. 

We saw hundreds of feeding pelicans and gulls, plus another lone gray whale, 

but the highlight of the day 

was the pod of a 1000+ Common Dolphins 

that swam under and around our boat,

racing us,

surfing the waves

and our wake,

and putting on quite a show. 

 How many dolphins can you find?

The crew said that for every dolphin we could see, 

there were 5-10 more under the waves. 

Incredible!

We had such a great time 

and, as usual, Mother Nature had the last laugh. 

Just as they were getting ready to come in for the ride back to shore, a rogue wave surprised Leia and Pop, soaking them both through to the skin. I know I shouldn’t laugh but isn’t she cute, all salty and wet? 

Rolling In The Dough

Jackie spent the night Monday and announced - in one of her many attempts to dodge bedtime - that she wanted to make cookies. 

We had to negotiate the type, flavor, shape and color(s) before she *finally* went to sleep. Tiny girl is stubborn!

Not pretty but tasty!

So Tuesday we made sugar cookie dough, divided it into quarters and pulled out the Christmas cookie cutters.  

Jac colored the icing and did all the decorating.

And most of the eating.  

Jac was adamant she didn’t want the color to be “baby poop brown” again but she was having too much fun adding colors and . . . Yeah, brown it is. 😂

We ran out of time, so Leanne made her cookies on Wednesday,

including two shades of purple icing 

and most of a large bottle of sprinkles. 

We still had half the dough remaining, so today Jac and I added lemon flavoring, rolled, cut, baked and iced more cookies. Yum! Gotta love a project that provides snacks *and* three days of fun. 

Easter Parade, Round 2

We reshot the Easter pics, with added CO cousin and a guest photographer (Rachel).

So happy to have all these smiling faces together.