Hi all! OK, so I'm sitting in the living room listening to depressing news. Something about a possible bomb on a plane from Yemen. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye, across the street some huge bird came swooping in from the west. It was clearly a woodpecker, but it was so large it was bordering on creepy. It effortlessly bounced up the trunk of the Ash in the Hillbillies' yard. Then...it swooped on over to our yard! It was coming right at the bow window at first. It felt so exhilarating! Then it swooped again (no other word for it) to Sarah--our Ash tree. I didn't see it go there, but instinctively knew it would. I grabbed my new birthday camera and got these through the wavy glass window in our front door. I'm so happy they turned out as well as they did (thanks honey for the new camera).
I did a little research and it turns out that this is a rarely seen Pileated woodpecker. I think we saw one on display at the Minnesota Zoo last week. I was thinking at the time, "Jesus, I've never seen that in Minnesota." LOL--I guess Jesus took that as a hint. ha ha

So apparently they're 19" tall (!) and the female doesn't have a red mark under her eye, but other than that both genders look the same. I think our new visitor is a female. I'll have to name her. If our trees have names, so can their guests. ;-)
In other news, ds had his first guitar lesson last night. He can play audible songs now! LOL I'm proud of him. Now if only his orchestra teacher would have them start playing the violin TWO months into the year! DS has got five more weeks of guitar lessons. I'd like to have him keep it up.

I'm almost done knitting the Daphne and Delilah monsters for dd's Christmas present. I need to sew up the sides of the pocket and give Delilah some arms. I'm going to try to pick up sts. for them instead of doing them separately and sewing them on. I'm not too proficient at that.

I'm going to buy another pattern from Danger Crafts...the one with the ring around her eye and Shrek-like ears. I'll make that for my niece's 2.5 yr. old daughter. I'd like to knit ds a cat or dog too from Danger Crafts too. Each pattern is $6 though, so I want to be prudent and make sure I'll actually knit the dang things. Here's a link. Such cute patterns. I saw some Christmas things on there now too. //http://www.etsy.com/shop/dangercrafts

I'd better go. I want to get out in the sunshine and walk before all the little kids start strolling home from school.