Surgar Shock

Flour, butter shortening, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, eggs and lots of cleaning my kitchen-- that summarizes my week. Somehow I got myself into making cookies for all the males at church this week. That was right on the tail of making Br's birthday treats. The sad thing is I'll probably make cupcakes this week.

Some green on my side of the fence

Over the past few weeks we've worked a lot on trying to make our backyard a little more interesting than it was when we moved in. E has been especially excited about all the time he's gotten to spend outside "helping". We are still working on our water feature and put in two flower beds.


















E saw br moving stuff on the dolly and wanted to ride so he climbed on by himself.

He's also watched me fill my watering can out of the barrel that collects rainwater. I was out in the garden pulling weeds and turned around to find him trying to fill his watering can.

Just as I was beginning to give up hope on my garden -- most of it has died or has just stopped growing -- I discovered these little guys.

Visiting the family at the Zoo... I mean Visiting with the family at the zoo

Our Memorial Day adventure to ABQ for Pappy's birthday (observed) celebration included a trip to the zoo. It was some good furry fun! Thanks Jess, Chris, Parker and Pappy for letting us come!

CONgraduation much better than a Graduation

When I opened the mailbox on Monday I discovered that Br's Master's diploma had finally arrived. Yes, we both finished our graduate work like 3 years ago unfortunately Br's adviser wasn't very motivated to approve Br's thesis. My observation of grad school is that it is a lot of jumping through hoops and it seems at times that advisers get a lot of joy watching you jump so they put up hoop after hoop and you have no other option but to jump. You work hard on writing a thesis and then you give it to them and they turn around and make you change it. Then you give them the revised version and they want to change it again. And this process goes over and over until you finally change everything you've changed back to how it was before. In the end you find that the last hoop you jump through looks a whole lot like the first one you jumped though.

In any event Br's professor finally let him defend his thesis this past semester and now he has officially graduated. Since the end was a little anti-climatic (seeing as we've already moved on in our life), Br didn't go to graduation. When the diploma surprised me in the mail I decided to surprise Br with a CONgraduation when he got home from work. I put up some balloons and a banner, turned our outdoor kitchen into a podium and stage, and invited out friends over. We played pomp and circumstance on kazoos. I made Br give the commencement address. His friend Derek hooded him (with a hood made of tissue paper and aplastic table cloth). Then E presented him with his diploma. After we went and got some pizza. I think every graduation should be this short and sweet.

Back in the saddle again

Since we've moved I haven't really had the time or a reason to make any cakes. Yesterday I finally got to break out the cake stuff. Our friends the Kelly's redeemed their free cake coupon I donated to a service auction to raise money for girl's camp. The cake was for their sister's 30th birthday.

While my kitchen was taken over by fondant, icing, and food coloring I decided to make my dad a cake for an early birthday celebration we are going to have when we head to ABQ for the long weekend.

It feels good to have my creative outlet back! Anyone want to help me clean my kitchen?

Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water

The theme for this past Saturday was "the elements". Okay so it was only a little windy as we were going to sleep so that doesn't really count. Despite the fact that is was the hottest day of the year so far and SOOOO humid we spend a lot of time working in the garden and trying to fix our waterfall in the back yard. E got a little too into trying to help with the water fall so we decided to distract him by letting him run in the sprinklers for the first time.

Later that night we got a call that the guy that owns the land behind our was having a little bonfire so we walked down to join in on the fun. There were a bunch of youth from church there who were supposed to be piling all the dead branches onto the fire. Once E figured out what everyone else was doing he wanted to join in.

While we were there he took a ride in a little backyard merry-go-round (hey he was spinning through the air... maybe that counts for wind).

And even caught a toad.

Hello Mr. Toad

He's been spotted

E advances

Contact!

Farmer E

I don't always dress my kid like he's working on a farm, but it just so happens that on a day I did he decided to act the part. He and I were in the backyard while I was trying to talk to my boss on the phone. I hung up and turned around and saw that he'd drug a hoe out onto the lawn and got to work.

The Masked Bandit

So last Thursday I looked out the back door window and saw a masked bandit creeping up the porch. It was almost a year to the date that the guy tried to break in the back door at our old house while I was standing right there... but this wasn't quite the same thing. This masked bandit was a HUGE raccoon. I've seen tons of squirrels in the backyard but didn't realize our little forest had other critters as well. The neighbors say there are a couple raccoons, some possums, lots of squirrels and possibly a fox. I feel a little like I'm living in the movie "Over the Hedge" except that the hedge is a fence. Seeing as I like that movie a lot I feel a little hypocritical. I vow not to call the verminator though.

The thing is the raccoon was coming to the porch to each the dog's food that we leave outside because E loves to play with/eat it. Now that I know I've fed the wildlife, I'm wondering which of the little ones I care for has been malnourished this whole time. If the raccoon has been eating the dog food then that probably means that Duchess has been eating more of E's food then I realized and if that is true then E has been eating less of his food. Maybe that's the reason he tries to eat the dog food.

Hoping my thumb turns green

(The first bloom of the flowers in my yard)

Happy Earth Day!! So this year I've decided to attempt to grow a garden. I've done it mostly because the side yard was pretty sad but very sunny. I've planted tomatoes, zucchini, salad greens, spinach, pumpkins, watermelons, cucumbers, a couple types of onions, hot peppers, herbs, and cantaloupe. I don't expect anything to actually grow but boy will I be excited if it does. Here's the before:


This is the After... or I guess the in between (cross your fingers)


The first things to sprout was my pumpkin. (To be fair I started it inside... but it has gotten bigger since it's been in the ground). I've already sworn that I won't carve a pumpkin this year unless it comes from my yard.

Shelter from the storm

A week ago I was awakened in the early morning (about 3:30 am) to the worst storm I've ever been in. The wind was so loud and the light was flashing all different colors. I tried to turn the TV on to see if there was a tornado warning. Unfortunately the TV didn't turn on because the power was out. The power was out for three full days (almost to the exact moment). No TV, or microwave, or fridge, or AC. After the sun went down everything was done by candle light. Despite the inconvenience and the loss of a lot of food, I appreciate the perspective that the experience provided. I feel truly blessed that our house was completely unharmed. The morning after I was brought to tears of gratitude as I drove around out neighborhood to find huge trees completely uprooted, fallen branches everywhere and the baseball field dugouts and fences torn up and crumpled. Despite the storm going past our house nothing happened on our property. We have a whole forest of trees and not one branch fell. The garbage can, a large piece of cardboard, a bucket with paper hanging out of it, our grill cover, were all left outside but were still right where I had left them. We were truly watched over and protected and I am grateful.

The pictures are the yards of a few houses in the neighborhood. The bottom picture is of the roots of a tree that took our the fence and leaned on the house.

Disneyworld 2008

So we just got back from our second visit to Disneyworld. We had a great time. E's favorite things were making friends with people, meeting the characters and running around whenever we let him out of his stroller. Most of all he loved getting wet. There were lots of little water fountains all around and E ran for them. On the last day we finally gave in and let him play. Later that day it started pouring rain as we were trying to leave the park to catch our bus to the airport. It was coming down hard and everyone was running for cover. We noticed the faces of people laughing at E as they ran past. We had a rain cover over his stroller but he had lifted it up so that he could enjoy the storm. Silly kid.

Spring Break 2008

My sister J and her boys C and P came to visit for a few days for their spring break. That makes 3 years in a row! Thanks Shepherds for spending your time off with us. Aside from spending time with them, I enjoyed playing tourist in my new home town. Two highlights were going to the West End in Dallas to see the JFK memorial and 6th floor of the book depository. (Well we didn't actually go to the museum since it was overpriced but we did hear about the conspiracy theories as we sat outside.) We also had a really good time at the Ranger's stadium tour and baseball museum.

Memories from Houston

This week a fun little package arrived in the mail from JoJo (Br's mom) of pictures of the trip to the zoo we (JoJo, E, Auntie B and I) took the last weekend we were in Houston. Here are the highlights.