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Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. Then when you do criticize them you are a mile away and you have their shoes. .... unknown

Wish this had b-days and such

February 2010
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Sticks and string

Some tape and imagination make….   a bow and arrow!   It’s been cold here….brrrr… so “big yellow” had to come out of the closet.  Amazing he’s been wearing that coat since he came to live with us!  Next year it will probably be too small… he’s growing like a weed.

Robin Hood

Quiet

The house is quiet tonight.  The only noise is the buzz of the various electronics and the sound of my fingers on the keys.    Somehow that makes the house seem foreign.

The boys are on an adventure tonight!   They spent the day getting ready and off they went for an overnight camping trip.  It’s going to be cold tonight but they assure me only girls worry about such things.   Boys will make fire and stay toasty warm.  :)      They took hot dogs and s’more fixings so I know they won’t starve.

If I get to missing them too much, I only have to go out the back door.   They are in the woods behind our house.  I can’t see them, but boys will be boys and every now and then I can hear them laughing.   We’ll all have a good time tonight! (but only I will be warm!)

I was telling Mom about my new Christmas decorations and said I would send a picture.  Here it is!
Believe...

Believe...

Here are a couple of pictures of the boys.  They weren’t really sleeping although they make a good show of it!
 
Being normal
 

Being silly

 
 

Alls well

See?
Grinch?

Grinch?

 

 

 

Gracias Merci Thanks

Thanksgiving was good this year!  Moist turkey, creamy mashed potatoes and the best apple pie I’ve ever made.  Ok, I didn’t actually make the pie.  Our friends 10 year old daughter did all the work.  It was her first pie and it was better than mine.  No fair! 

After dinner we retired to the play room (otherwise known as the living room) where kids and adults alike competed for the longest ski jump and the best score on 100 pin bowling.    It was great!  I love the Wii… it is like no other game console.  Our friends commented over and over how good it was to have a game where everyone was on their feet and moving around.  I agree!  Forget the carpal tunnel, my arms hurt from racing in a canoe!    :o

Today Squirt and I shopped for some home decor.   Bealls, the store that suggests we should “live the Florida lifestyle”, always has fun beachy things.  Today it was mostly Christmas stuff which was all at least 50% off and at the register an additional 15% was deducted.  This is my kind of shopping!   It’s important for me to note that we did NOT get up at 2am to get in line.  We went at 2:30 in the afternoon because the supposed “great deals” all ended at 1pm.  We weren’t alone in the store, but close to it!  Yahoo!

School shopping in this house is broken into pieces.  In August we bought new shoes and shirts and shorts.  No sense buying long pants in August when they will be too short by the time they are needed in November.   In the boys section we eye-spy’d the bathrobes for boys and had to pick one up.  Roy and I both have nice thick robes we wear to run from the house to the hot tub when it’s cold outside.  Squirt needed one too.   Of course, he is quite a ham and struck a pose while drinking his leftover sparkling grape juice. (see below)

Happy start of the holidays! 

DSC05398

Boo!

As part of last week’s punishment for lying by omission (oh, did I forget to tell you that I got in trouble at school?) and for lying about obeying restriction (parents know all), the little guy had to write three essays.  Behavior, character and honesty were the topics.  On the fourth day, I told him to write me a story about anything he wanted.    I’ve transcribed it below.  I fixed some spelling out of habit, but tried to stay true to the words.  Enjoy!
.
Halloween Nightmares
by Squirt
.
Once on a creepy pitch black night like no other night it was a halloween nightmare.  There was a kid named Triston, it was the day of halloween.  So Triston went on his excursion into the dark to go to each house and take strangers candy.
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Oh did I mention that halloween in the best night not because of the candy it is because you get to break the rules… don’t stay out past dark, don’t dress like a ballarina, and my favorite, don’t talk to strangers but we get to take candy from them.  Back to the story.
.
So he dressed up as Anikan Skywalker and he went on to house to house and so to find out he was in the haunted house of the Wizardry Family.  He went inside and soon to find out he was in the room of the murdered child and he wails each halloween for people to come inside.   And as soon as the kid came in he knew that he was doomed.
.
Moo ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Moo ha ha ha ha ha ha!
.
And the murdered child had his revenge.  Scared the kid Triston so much that he peed his pants and costume and never slept or went out in the dark again.
.
The End.
Halloween 2009

Halloween 2009

 

Vampire Squirt

Vampire Squirt

 

Friends?

Friends?

 

Tides turn

Tides turn

Whimsy

flamingoWhy didn’t they think of this before?  A cool Florida style decoration that is also functional!  Craziness!  This thing not only holds our keys, it’s a WHITE BOARD.  HA!  (oh, wait.. it’s a PINK board, isn’t it?).  I found this at the Seafood festival.  It was hard to choose between the tropical fish and other cool beachy things!  I never though I’d own a flamingo, but now I do.   He hangs out by the front door… I guess we should name him.

And now I’m going in to get a picture of the kid for you.  He is one unhappy camper so this should be interesting….well, that’s not so bad after all.   Here he is keeping those pearly whites, pearly white!

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This one won’t count

See how all my great intentions can leave me stressed out at 8:49 on Sunday night?  I was supposed to post a brilliant, photo filled blog for all my fans (yes, both of you!) to enjoy before I go to bed tonight.  Oops!

It’s been a good weekend!  Yesterday I cleaned my refrigerator and made Caribbean Crab Cakes.  They were very bland.  Today I made Irish Black Bean Chili … now that was tasty.  The beans cooked in Guinness beer for a couple hours…. Irish chili is different but delicious!

Nathan didn’t go to basketball practice on Friday because his hip is giving him trouble.   He really wanted to go, but we decided he should rest it for a few days.   My best guess is this… growing spurt.  I would bet my life savings that he will grow an inch in the next month.  I think that is extra difficult for him, but I also think he will get through it just fine. 

Happy Birthday to Matt! 

Ok, that’s it for now.   More tomorrow or the next day… with pictures I promise!

Time lapse life

I look at the date of my last post and think, oh my, even my biggest fans have given up on me for sure!  Six weeks is shameful.  So here’s my Blog Resolution #1.  Once a week, before the end of the weekend, every week.   If this goes like most other resolutions I’ve made, it will last approximately two weeks.  I don’t like to be told what to do, even by myself.

We’ve had a pretty good six weeks.  Let’s see how much of it I can remember…

~ School is in session.  Squirt has a man for a teacher (a boy really, he’s 22!!) which has proven to be exactly what he needed.

~ Band is in progress, and Squirt is playing the saxaphone.  Saxaphones are very expensive!  We are on the rent-to-own plan, paying monthly towards principle, insurance and maintenance.  It is a very good deal.   In another 30 days when (if) Squirt decides he’d really rather play the trumpet, we can trade in the sax.   That’s my kind of plan!

~ Basketball season is here and last years shoes are too small.  Good thing I don’t mind shopping <grin>

~ We went to the Seafood Festival a couple weeks ago.  We ate Crawfish Etouffee (goood stuff!), fried gulf shrimp, crab cakes and alligator sausage on a stick.  That last one was Squirt’s choice.  None of us really liked it but we are glad we can say we tried it.  Squirt is very adventuresome, I think his Grandma taught him that.

~ A few times this summer we came home to find the cover off the hot tub and/or the radio on.  The thought of someone coming in to our yard is annoying at best and dangerous at it’s worst.   If it is the 20 somethings next door I’m annoyed.  (they could just ask!)  If it’s the 8 year old down the street..well.. not so good.    To catch the culprit I put the video camera in the window and off we went to work.  When we got home, the cover was off.  AHA!  I caught them!   All I had to do was watch 8 hours of video…  haha.   I found the right place in the video and to my surprise, watched a gust of wind blow the cover open.  :o

~ Lastly, I bought Wii Fit.  It’s been two weeks and I’ve only missed two days.  (One of them was to set up the video camera!)    I don’t want to miss any days because it is very fun to do!    The “game” comes with a thing that looks like a scale they call the balance board.  It tracks your weight and BMI and gives you a Wii Fit Age.  I am 42 years old.  My Wii Fit age has been everything from 49 down to 32, depending on how balanced I am.    Sorry this sounds so much like an advertisement, but this thing is really good!

There are four sections:  1.  balance games such as hit soccer balls with your head, flow upstream in a bubble without popping it on shore, downhill ski through flags, and slide around on an ice berg eating fish.  2.  Aerobics such as boxing, step aerobics, running and hula hooping.    3.  Strength exercises.  and 4.  Yoga poses.  3 and 4 measure you on how steady you are where you contact the balance board.  

Over all the games are fun, the aerobics make me sweat, the strength exercises are both challenging and do-able, and the yoga… man… I had no idea how wonderful yoga could be.  It’s tough but I find myself calming when I do it.  (Who’d a thunk that I would be a yoga promoter? )  

Ok… that should catch you up.  Roy is doing well also.  He and Nathan go to basketball and lately have been starting fires (trying?) in the woods like Survivorman….just sticks and dry bark.  If you haven’t seen Survivorman episodes, they are pretty good.   We watched them on NetFlix.

Next week I’ll have some better content and maybe even a picture or two!

Video test

I have some great little videos that I’d like to be able to share with friends and family.  My problem is, the files are just too big and I haven’t yet figured out how to use my Video Vegas Studio software.  I just need a little more time.  Here is an interim practice project.  Those two young boys, wrestling on the bed.  I assure you all heads are fine!

Clunk.  That was the sound of me crashing and burning on the whole video upload thing.  <sigh> I’ll keep trying…

Hmm… click on this Clunk.  I think it works!