Grandkids in the South Texas Spring. 2016

Here' a picture of my youngest grandchild, Kailyn, from April of this year.  She just got a new puppy called "Ruger".

 Here's my grandsons Mason and Maddox.  If you notice I used the same sky.  I use an open source program called "Gimp".  The sky on the top picture is zoomed in more but if you look at the tiny cloud in the middle you can see the size is different and in the top picture nearer to the horizon.  Getting the clouds to show through the brush was a trick.  I didn't do as good of job on the bottom picture because it was my first try at layering mask. I lost detail in the fence and some clouds show through the fence post.  Sure it's easy to go back and paint in the post from it's layer but I learned that trick after I posted it to Facebook.

 Here's a screenshot of the App "Gimp" with a picture before I edited the sky.  I Googled sky pictures until my OCD thought I found a sky that matched better with the Bluebonnets.

I saw a post from a cousin of mine of a bird picture a friend of her had posted.  She was holding the bird in her hand because it had hit an window.   I've seen one like it before but it is very rare in our area.  It reminded me of an encounter with a bird I had just had in our area.
 I didn't put the Christmas Tree up in the garage this year, instead I hind it on the back porch.  A mockingbird made a nest in it and hatched eggs.  The other day I saw one of them on the ground with it's mother.  I picked it up and put it back in the tree twice.  The third time I got it on my finger and took it to show the family.  While inside I put it on my shoulders and played guitar.  I put it back on the nest after that and the next morning they had all flown away.  I can't believe how fast mockingbirds mature!  Here the first picture I took when it started to leave the nest.

   Guess the reason I'm posting this to my blog is the blog started with an experience I had with an owl.  Maybe it's a marker of a period shift in my life.  Maybe it's just a stupid encounter with another bird.

Here's a better picture of my grand daughter's blue eyes.

Kaylyn our third grand baby

Here she is our latest grand baby Kaylyn.  She's the daughter of my number 3 child.  She has just started to crawl. 

Here she is pictured with the pink frog we got her for Valentine.  I got to see her crawling, the first time for me the other day.  We also had a really good meal with Justin and Lindsay my daughter and son-in-law.  He's a chef and fixed a really good soup dinner.  Gracie the dog was also excited to see us.

As Time Goes By

I'm totally out of the Trucking Business now.  I had to sell the Truck really cheap to pay off my back taxes.  Especially the back years on my home.  My wife's car had already been repo so after the truck sold we had to move our things out of our house and sell it.  I've moved in with my parents and guess I'm now a bum.

Some of the good news is now we have another grand son called Maddox so Mason has a little brother.

Also Lindsay is with child a little girl who will be named later.

I'm having an hard time dealing with all the time and work that I put into the trucking business.  The 14 hour work days is the norm in trucking.  I just can't go back to that when I've lost everything doing it.
  I've always wanted to try and return to the days when I was a musician.  My family is not behind me on this and think I'm crazy.  But I've always believed I had a special gift for it.   www.youtube.com/user/bigfootyancey  is my You Tube channel where my efforts toward getting my ability to play guitar back after 30 years of driving truck is recorded in different videos over the last year. 

Raw Cow Hides

As a owner-operator working under my own authority which means you send them lots of paper.  They feel more productive that way.  Anyway here's a picture of the load of raw cow hides being loaded onto my truck which later became a really big problem when my reefer stopped working!!  

Out of the Trucking Business

The end of my trucking was brutal.  You try to work more hours but  to quote the evil robot, "resistance is futile".  On the last trip I had $6,000 in repairs to the reefer alone.  Then the next trip back, it was the turbo.
The reefer repair by it's self was around what my average income, over the last 4 years was, not counting depreciation on the equipment and meal expense deduction adjustments I pay a CPA to do.  That way I get earn income ajustments that the government takes back for one of the kids college loan.

Not much for 200,000 dollar investment and 14 hour a day working schedule!