Rockin' Out At The Church Picnic

Tuesday At The Pool

Before lunch

After lunch

They Assure Me It's Perfectly Safe

Aikido Kai

Martial arts skills AND killer hair.  Lethal combo.

Everybody should wear a tutu now and then

She's Digging This New High Chair Thing

Drawing at Pap's House

Pap keeps a well-stocked supply of dry erase markers at his house, and the kids spend part of every visit filling up the white boards.

Noelle, showing off some of her handiwork

Natalie would rather sort them according to hue

The finished product

I Wanna Soak Up The Sun

Good Morning, Daddy!

Daisy, upon catching first sight of Daddy this morning

Twins in the Pool

Everybody Loves You

"Everybody loves you, everybody loves you..." is what Natalie was singing as she tenderly surrounded Regina with stuffed toys, trying to keep her from crying while I sorted laundry.

Natalie

Hawaiian Punch moustache, Big Top CupCake pan on her head.  It's Natalie's turn in the spotlight.

Dad's Favorite Chicken

Dad and Bunty

Good Night. Sleep Tight.

Sweet Dreams.

Feel The Burn

And reach. And reach. And hold it. Yeah! You're doing it!

Regina & D'Artagnan

We're getting ready for another Texas road trip, so we took the RV for a test drive today for a shakedown.  To kill a few birds at the same time, we also went to visit Grandma, and took our new kitty with us so they could meet.

Regina loves to drive in the car, and she loves the kitty.  He wasn't so crazy about the ride, and he handled her "love" patiently.  She pulled at his fur, his lips, his ears, and even once grabbed his little paw and began chewing on it.  Eww.  But he didn't cry once, and didn't try to get away.

He did realize, however, that if he curled up around her feet, then he was relatively safe.  He stayed there for the rest of the trip - a warm, fuzzy footrest.

My kitty.  Mine.  Gimme, gimme kitty.

Ahhh.

Bad Swimming Girl

Noelle likes to dress up in her swim gear and run around the house, telling us she's "Bad Swimming Girl."  We haven't yet discerned whether she's a bad girl who swims, or a girl who swims badly.  Either way, Bad Swimming Girl was unleashed on an unsuspecting public this week.

By the way, that's a new flotation device we got at Dick's Sporting Goods, and it works great.  It doesn't tip over at all, and I don't have to worry about it slipping off like swim rings or arm rings.

Regina-Cakes is 6 months old today!

In the past week, she:

discovered her toes

began sitting up

 started babbling bla-bla and da-da

improved her accuracy with those grabby little hands of hers

became intensely interested in watching the new kitten

(who, incidentally, keeps attacking my dancing fingers on the keyboard as I type)

Mittens Has A Little Brother

Last week, my oldest son Scott came home with that look in his eye that means, "I know you're not going to like what I did, but I did it anyway."  That look, and a five-week-old kitten he called Daisy.  I guess my husband and I are too tired to fight anymore, because not only did Daisy seamlessly -nay, enthusiastically - integrate into the family, I also got her an appointment at the vet two days hence to quickly curtail the flea-scratching.

The vet appointment quickly confirmed what I had suspected:  my son is terrible at determining the sex of a kitten.  "Daisy" is really "D'Artagnan."  And he really is the cutest thing imaginable.  We are particularly enamored of his habit of playing for 30 minutes with a bedskirt or the bristles on a broom.  It's so hard to resist his playfulness.

Unless you're Mittens.

All she does is growl and hiss and hog the food and water dishes when he's around.  But that only deters him for a half-second.  He wants to be around her so badly.  He mews when he sees her,  creeps as close as he can before she hisses, and stalks her irritably-twitching tail.

Tonight, he was already on my bed when she came in for the night.  Imagine the nasty surprise she got when she jumped up and found him IN HER SPOT.  She wanted to leave in a huff, but I convinced her to stay, and in a few minutes he had crept as close as he dared.

Mittens was not amused.

"La-la-la-la I can't hear you, I'm ignoring you, you're not really here!"

An hour later, they were still sleeping a few inches from each other.  He even crept up close enough to be able to touch her with his front paws.

"I'm still ignoring you."

I suspect it's mostly an act on her part, and once she makes her point and proves her dominance, they'll be snuggling and grooming each other. It's so much fun to watch her defenses crumble!

Greased Lightning

Theresa - you can't see the vapor trails behind her too well in this photo.  Man, was that kid moving!

Noelle

Noelle

In case you're wondering what's up with all the uploaded, uncaptioned pictures, there's a simple explanation.  I can't transfer my full-size cell phone pictures directly to my computer.  The only way I can get them on to my computer is to send them to blogger from the phone, enlarge them, right-click and save to my computer.

Sweetness and Light

Or should I say Pain and Panic?  Divide and Conquer?  Search and Destroy?

I Bet You Missed Hearing About The Chickens

When it gets hot out, they laze around like beauty queens with their wing feathers spread wide.

Today Conor found an egg that is literally no bigger than a peanut M&M. 

Clare, Brian & Theresa.  This is most likely the hen that laid the M&M.  This is Scrappy, formerly known as the feral or wild chicken, or the African Game Fowl.  She's getting pretty old; those unusual eggs most often come from immature or older hens.  Nobody else has been able to catch her since we found her in 2009, but Theresa (r) can catch her almost at will.

And finally, check out the huge, hairy spider we saw on the ceiling of the coop.  I had no idea they existed so big around here.  :-(

Andy, you have to see this!

Why doesn't Regina laugh like this?

More Regina-Cakes

We Have Created A Monster

Okay, so you saw Regina's introduction to ice cream the other day.  I don't get it - she never had ice cream before.  How is it that she reacted so enthusiastically when she saw me eating my Peanut Buster Parfait???  How could she have known that it wasn't sweet potatoes or cereal?

So yesterday was Brian's birthday, and it's so hot and humid that turning on the oven and eating a heavy cake wasn't an option.  So I made a light and fluffy and cool dessert, called Eclair Cake, which involves pudding, whipped topping, and a jar of hot fudge sauce.  And we took a slice up to visit with Brian's grandmother, who couldn't attend the party.

She sampled the dessert, but since she isn't much of a pudding person, she sent most of it back home with us.  Regina was strapped in her car seat for the entire visit, having been asleep when we arrived.  When she started to cry, it was time for us to leave.  I placed the plastic tub of dessert on her lap and carried her out, car seat against my hip like a laundry basket.

She didn't make a peep once I started moving, and I assumed that she was falling asleep again.  When we got to the parking lot and it was time to buckle her seat in, this is what I found.

Miss Manual Dexterity 2011