Seems like my acid reflux problem is making a comeback. It's a little past midnight and every time I move I get a little sting in my esophagus. Lovely. 
I have four weeks left of Anatomy for the summer. I'm looking forward to it being over. It's been easier in some ways than I thought it would be, and I think the most challenging part has been dealing with the other students in the class. Reading the class discussion board has been stressful, and I'm actually doing just fine in the class. There is so much defeatism going on - granted there are 80 students in the class, and only as many as 15 or so regularly post, but sheesh! I wonder how many people decided before the class even began that it was going to be Hard, and they weren't going to do well. It's tough to change your attitude, but if they think this stuff is hard, I wonder how they'll handle grad school.
We had some people over today for a cookout. Some of those people were very small and short-tempered. Ginnie's only used to being around other kids when they come to visit or at school: she doesn't have any brothers or sisters with whom she can practice sharing or conflict resolution.
After everyone left, she lamented not having any siblings. It made me a little sad, but I guess it's just like her book Pinkalicious says: "you get what you get, and you don't get upset."
Still, I thought she did a great job with all those kids. She seemed to be on the wrong end of the fight about the same number of times as the other kids. I think she's about average with her notion of sharing. She rolled with the punches a couple of times, which made me proud. She's doing really well playing with both girls and boys, beinga princess who can get knocked down a lot without crying. Which brings me to:
Neale's Rule of Pre-School Parties
The party is over when half or more of the guests are crying.
The party lasted a little over 4 hours, which is a new record I think.
In other news, Ginnie is crazy about LEGO bricks now. Every morning we spend some time playing with them. She has a lot of people, 4 cars, and a couple of useful odd shapes. She could really use one or two LEGO City sets, and/or a handful of those little boxes with 20-30 pieces that make a car or helicopter or whatnot. All we have, really, are square bricks. Which is cool, don't get me wrong, but some more wheels and a couple of wings would be nice.
I think from now on, whenever I go on travel, I'm going to bring back a small LEGO set. I think that would be a fun tradition to have, and I figure she'll get a lot of use out of them.
She's been a lot more affectionate in the last month or two, and I don't know why, but I like it. It's nice to get kisses and hugs in addition to being tackled and jumped on.
She's also a big fan of her half-bike. We worked out a system: if I'm going too fast, she rings her bell three times, and I'll slow down. On our last outing, she was ringing her bell a lot 
In closing, Ginnie is awesome.
Every night, all night long, there are 10-20 bees loitering around the hive entrance, on the outside of the hive. I guess those are guard bees, and I'm hoping that this is normal for them. It's possible they're still on edge about the skunk.
Another bee landed in my hair today while I was watching the hive from about 4 feet away. It buzzed around in there for about 30 seconds while I tried to brush it off with some plants. Amy finally swatted it out, and then it was pissed. It landed on my face right next to my eye and I swatted it away again, and ran off. Amy opines that it was just a forager that fell into my hair and couldn't get out. I'm back to being scared again: bees go for eyes, noses, and mouths, and I was probably milliseconds away from getting stung in my eye. From now on I'll keep my distance when watching them, even if it was just an accidental landing at first.
Tomorrow I plan to open the hive up to move some broken comb to the back. I'm a little nervous, but I feel reassured by how well the smoke worked last time. I plan to pop the hive open, very quickly scoot the good comb away one by one, and then pull out the broken one. It will probably come apart. I'll move the bar over to the end of the hive, then, using some L-shaped tool that I haven't found yet, scoop up the bottom half, and rest it against the back of the hive.
Moving the broken comb to the back of the hive is supposed to allow the bees to raise the brood and move the honey. When they're all moved out, they will abandon it there, and then I will harvest some wax and can begin to replace the top bars Paul gave me with the more uniform ones that I made.
I still can't tell the difference between capped honey and capped brood. I suppose it might be too early in the season to see much capped honey. I do know what an egg looks like, so that should be helpful. If I see any uncapped brood, I'm going to declare the queen in good health.
I'm also worried that the bees will have built comb across multiple top bars. It seems to be a common problem with this type of hive, and as far as I can tell there's nothing to be done for it but detach the comb and sew it back on the way you want it.
Amy thinks I'm spending way too much time and energy worrying about the bees. I wholeheartedly agree. I haven't yet discovered a way to mellow out about them, though.
Lemon Berry Smoothie Remix, by terriseesthings
You saw the first one, here’s another one!
Brando’s Morning Power Shake, Part Deux
Drop in a blender and mix until mixed well. You can substitute frozen blueberries to give it more of a slushy feel.
Oh good gravy, it has started. I know it is part of the universe reminding me how a pain in the ass great son I was. In fact, I was the best son my parents ever had. And I feel comfortable saying that at least until that paternity test comes back.
Over the last month or so, Garrett has a one word response to pretty much everything you say. I never thought that the power of one word would cause Chris’s blood pressure to go up 10-20 points at dinner as she looks at me screaming “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!” What’s that famous word?
“Why?”
Us: Garrett, please put your dishes away.
G: Why?
Us: Because that’s what we do when we are done with our meal.
Us: Garrett, it’s time to go inside.
G: Why?
Us: Because we need to eat dinner, take a bath, and go to bed.
G: Why?
Us: Because you need to go to sleep so you can rest for tomorrow.
G: WHY?
Us: Garrett, STOP RUNNING.
G: Why?
Us: Because I said so dammit! (At this point I saw pigs flying by our window after realizing I just turned into my parents.)
If this is any indication of how his formative years will be spent, I expect him to be challening the Man as often as he can.
When I got home, Amy helped me raise the hive from 16 to 24 inches by adding another cinder block underneath it. At about 9:30pm I caught a strong whiff of skunk. Hopefully that's the end of this chapter in the bee saga.
I told Amy that either the skunk will eat all the bees in the hive, or the bees will scare the skunk off. Either way there's nothing more I can do about it. Frankly I'm sick of worrying about the bees.
Ginnie and I went to the dentist today. She loves going to the dentist (and announced that in the dentist's office too). She so comfortable with it that we do our appointments at the same time, in different exam rooms, and whoever is done first just comes and joins the other until they're finished. The dentist gives me his report on her when he sees me, and then we're done. There are some things with this kid that are far easier than I had imagined they'd be.
We also went swimming again today, and Ginnie is now doing what my sister and I were doing at about her age - diving to the bottom of the pool and retrieving objects. Boy, I remember loving to do that (goggles are SO COOL). Only we used pennies, and not these new-fangled brightly colored rings they have nowadays. ha.
Seems like we're cramming everything we can into summer, and it only just started. Camping already, swimming three times a week at least, already saw a baseball game in ABQ, getting house projects done...only the big one (the deck) we'll be forced to focus on if we want to get it done soon. Walking the dogs in the late afternoon has been nice. We got Dingo a new halter that works so well at keeping him from pulling that Ginnie can walk him by herself. That is really nice, because walking Jada and Dingo together turns into a tugfest. Having Ginnie be old enough to do some of these things is SO NICE.
Last night at about 4:30am our larger, normally quiet, dog rushed outside and began barking. We went outside to tell her to can it, and saw a bunch of bees--maybe 20 to 50--bunched tightly around the entrance to the hive. There were bees aloft as well.
This morning when I went outside to look at them, one landed in my hair, escaped, and began buzzing my face, so I went back indoors. The outside of the hive looked fine, though: bars all in place, and the bees appeared to be engaged in their usual foraging flights with no unusual activity. I didn't see any unusual marks near the entrace.
We live in a part of town called "skunk hollow" and there are quite a lot of skunks around here. My theory is that a skunk found our hive and had a snack. I hope the bees convinced the skunk not to come back, but the hive's only 16 inches off the ground and that may not have been high enough. Or maybe that broken comb fell over last night.
My patience is wearing thin. So far, the following has happened:
I'm not sure I can put up with too much more bee drama.
Hey folks, you may have noticed my big warning about the accuracy of the weather station data. I finally sent the thing off to Davis’s HQ for repair. I was going to send it earlier, but wanted it handy for the tail end of tornado season. I hope to get it back in about six weeks, so stay tuned!
First off, I’m not being paid to post this. That said, you can probably guess where this is going.
GREATEST. INVENTION. EVER.
Holy crap, if you are a photographer, this is a MUST HAVE accessory for your camera.
Camera straps are something that most of us don’t think about… until we are using them. For starters, most camera straps proudly announce both the camera make and model, screaming “STEAL ME” from your neck and shoulder. Specifically, the new 5D Mark II from Canon says this.
Note to Canon: I understand you are proud. I am a proud owner of that magnificent piece of machinery, but seriously, everyone hates those “My kid is an honor student” bumper stickers just like we hate advertising how much we spent on the electronics slung across our shoulders. Some of us even go as far as blacking out the model number imprinted on the body, and others use duct tape and other tricks to make their cameras look like beat up hunks of junk to deter theft.
I immediately threw that camera strap away and purchased a generic one, and hated it just like I have hated every other camera strap I have attached to a camera I have used. In the field, using a camera strap is awkward even if you are only carrying one camera. Do I put it around my neck and support the whole weight of my camera in a manner that would make my chiropractor disown me? Do I put it over my shoulder and risk it falling off? How do I grab that thing and get it up to my face so I can see through the … damn… viewfinder.. ARGH.
Screw that.
The R-Strap series from BlackRapid is GENIUS. Here’s a video demonstrating how it works. This strap allows you to put the weight across your core, and you can pick the camera up off your hip for super quick shooting without adjusting anything. It’s the basic Ronco “Set it and forget it!” mantra. You get it situated on your body, and just shoot.
I found it to be very comfortable to wear, and walking around even at a brisk pace did not cause the camera to swing around. I suppose running would be an interesting thing to watch, but I don’t feel like trying that out.
The best part about this strap? It makes me want to carry my camera around!
Thank you BlackRapid for this fantastic product!
Happy Father's Day to you dads! I think we had a fun day here at the Pickett household. Neale got to play with his bees, and we just poked around doing odds and ends house chores until I realized I needed more screen material for fixing up two of our front window screens (the dogs ripped one up, and the roofers ripped the other up). So we hopped on our bikes (Ginnie on the Afterburner, which is the one-wheel seatpost attachment bike that's her new and favorite ride). We ran downtown (the flag for the Afterburner randomly snapped off halfway into the ride - what was up with that?!) and on the way back Ginnie got...sleeeeepy...I noticed her swaying side-to-side a little more on the way home, and I asked her if she was awake. She turned and gave me a very serious, sleepy look, like "wha? I just woke up..." Uh, we don't sleep on the bike, Gin! This is not a trailer! So that was a fun ride home trying to keep her awake! I guess I've never actually felt sleepy on a bike, even on our century ride the other year, so I thought that was pretty funny.
Neale pointed out that since we have determined that the size of our family is permanent, we can now buy this: the Bike Friday Family Triple Traveler. That actually got me kind of excited. We have the option of getting one that converts into a single bike, so we can sell Neale's current Bike Friday and he'd still come out of this with a single Bike Friday. So two things have to happen first: we well our Rodriguez tandem and Neale's Bike Friday (and whichever other bikes Neale has lying around that he's ready to part with) and see how much we have in hand to put into getting a Family Triple. Hopefully we'll have pretty close to enough...more than half saved at least. Maybe that way we can go for rides and I can easily catch Ginnie if she dozes off!
We installed the new hive on Saturday. A neighbor who happens to have the same style hive graciously agreed to come over and help. No stings at all this time, and now I think the reason I was being stung was because I was taking so long to do the hive inspections. Not to mention that we had a queenless hive. He commented that we have very gentle bees, we didn't use the smoker at all. Wearing gloves helped me feel more confident.
Amy lost her keychain over the weekend, and with it her little swiss army knife. When she went to get new keys made, I encouraged her to pick up a new knife. What she wound up with was a Leatherman Micra.
I didn't realize the tiny Leatherman was the same width and depth as my full-size swiss army knife, and about an inch shorter. It has more tools in it, to boot.
Now I'm obsessed with comparing various Leatherman tools. Not that I really need a new knife, but I have a birthday coming up and people seem to want to buy me things for my birthday.
As a result of re-evaluating what's in my pockets, I've also begun using a money clip. Actually it's a paper clip. I clipped all three of my cards together and if I ever have cash again, I guess I'll wrap it around the cards. So people looking to buy me something could get me a cheap money clip like this one.
The boys and I met up with our neighbors Katie, Dallin and Jacob at our new Battle Ground Library today. What a beautiful building!! The old BG Library was small and dark (about 4000 square feet) and the new one is drastically different with 14000 square feet, and HUGE kids area with kid size tables, chairs, and toys. There is also a flex/meeting room area where the wall space is really sliding glass panels to allow it to open up to the kids area. We wondered if maybe the kids story time will be in there when they start it up late June.
Elliott just wanted to play with the other kids and throw lego blocks, and Dominic decided to play after picking out a few books. We've already read the 3 we checked out, and I imagine we'll have many more trips to get new books. We also signed up for the summer reading program so that we can track our reading progress. For every 5 hours of reading, kids get to pick out a prize and get a certificate. We read a lot anyway, but this will help encourage even more reading. It's also exciting to see all the new shops that are moving in to the retail spaces. I can't wait for "Aunt Tam's" which promises to be a fabric and craft store of sorts. I spotted a coffee shop I plan to visit sometime, too. It's really neat to see all the new shops arriving in Battle Ground!
I will be at YAPC|10 in Pittsburgh the end of June. Here’s a schedule of the talks I plan to attend. There are a few holes not because the talks at those time suck but because they rock so hard I can’t decide which I want to attend.
This is Anatomy Summer for me, and right now we're diving into the spine and ribcage. Anyway, in studying I got interested in my extra rib again, which was discovered when we got into the fun car crash a year and a half ago. It's a cervical rib on my left side, which btw, extends from the C7 vertebrae. Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervical_rib. That part about the 125x higher rate of childhood cancer than the general population is interesting. Glad I got to skip that.
Between that and my curvy-wurvy spine, I'm surprised I can stand upright and not look too much like a freak. Well, maybe I do and everyone's nice enough not to clue me into that fact.
Anyway, I'm digging anatomy. It's a little more intense than normal because of the shortened semester, but since it's my only class that's a-ok with me.
Man, I love the Seattle Times. I read it and it seems like nothing's changed in Seattle since we left. Like today, I pulled up the Times webpage and one of the first headlines was "Man Falls from Third Story UW Fraternity Window." I immediately told Neale that I'd have enough money to buy myself a latte if I had a dollar for every time I'd seen that headline. Lo and behold, the Times published a list of all of the deaths and injuries from falls at the UW right below that headline! Pretty much all frats except for ?McMahon Hall, which boasts two deaths of course. That's what happens when you let kids have balconies in a high-rise dormitory.
Anyway, I think this list is a good basis for a horror story! Something along the lines of a university demon who demands 5 or 6 deaths every other decade by falling. On campus or greek row, it doesn't matter, alcohol-fueled is preferable! Man, I think this could have been a great Buffy episode (there were at least two great fraternity episodes, maybe three - one was a Halloween episode I think)! As you can see, the 80s had a good solid death or near-death experience every year, and two years twice. The 90s was a dry spell (wonder why that was...) but now they're flinging themselves out of windows again. I think I'm onto something here!
Anyway, that's all I've got. I dropped a 2x8 on my foot today, which hurt a lot, and I'm sure I'll be boasting a good bruise soon. Ginnie is turning into a sci-fi geek, and my failed raised veggie garden bed has been demolished in order to try to make use of the nice soil I should have started with. I'm one-third of the way through my anatomy class, and pretty much kicking butt. If all of school were about rote memorization...man, that'd be great. but very, very boring.
I need to get photos up from our vacation...
The whole family went to the Great Wolf Lodge for a night. There were 5 rooms worth of people staying there, and we had a great time!! We only stayed Sunday night, but we were able to start playing in the waterpark at 1pm Sunday and until 9pm Monday.
Elliott loved splashing in the kid pool and didn't care how wet he got. He mostly liked splashing with his right arm. He also liked floating on his back and walking (with help) up and down the edge of the swim area. Dominic liked the kid area, too. He preferred going up and down the steps to the water slide to check it out rather than going down it, and even ventured out to the wave pool on an inner tube with Daddy.
Gwendolyn and Elizabeth... BFF!!
Thanks to having so many wonderful aunties and grandparents willing to play with the boys, Travis and I were also able to try the big water rides. We had such a great time! We can't wait until the boys are a bit older so they can do some of the bigger rides with us!
Dad, Liz, Mike and Joannie coming out of one of the big tube slides...
We all managed to meet up at the Bar & Grille for dinner and squeezed in some cupcakes to celebrate Grandma Lolo's 88th birthday.
dinner with the fam...
Going somewhere in the car is a great opportunity to listen to kid music, as far as Dominic is concerned. He likes to call them "Dominic songs" (as opposed to my "mommy music"). Anyway, he picks them up fast, and we sing them in the house long after we've left the car. The favorites rotate... this month, it's "Little Bunny Foo-foo". The moral of the story is really "Hare today, Goon tomorrow", but listen to Dominic's version in this video clip... funny guy!
(I was trying to record Elliott saying "BROP" for drop... btw)
Elliott's birthday was today (4/30). Can't believe that just one year ago we were delivering him at the hospital!!
We decided to enjoy our day and go to OMSI. We picked up Great-Grandma Lolo who was in town and took her with us. The boys enjoyed the sand box and the blocks area, and then we escaped because it was lunch time. The boys and I went home for naptime and then after dinner, Travis, Dominic and I sang Happy Birthday to Elliott and watched him eat a (dairy-free) chocolate frosted chocolate cupcake. He REALLY liked it! Dominic got to help Elliott open his presents (one of which Dominic picked out for his brother and both of which he helped wrap). Elliott, of course, enjoyed playing with the boxes and eating the wrapping paper.
We also got Elliott a "fred flinstone" type car for his birthday. Elliott prefers that Dominic is the driver and he likes to hang on and practice walking (as long as Dominic doesn't back up or go too fast).
If I get a chance, I'll post photos later...
Grandma Lolo, Mong, and the boys
The boys and I went to our first ever parade together! The Hazel Dell Parade included 26 marching bands this year who were all really rehearsed! We parked at Mong & Pop's house and walked down to the bottom of the street with our wagon. It was so convenient to not have to worry about parking, especially since the news reported that between 20,000 and 25,000 spectators were watching. Made me think back to all the years I watched my sisters march in the parade. Mong joined us, and Great-Grandma Lolo was in town and got to be there, too.
Dominic and Elliott were absolutely smitten with all the music and drumming. Elliott kept dancing every time a band would play, and he also waved "bye-bye" to all the folks who were waving to him. So cute! Dominic got into the waving a bit later, and caught on to the candy catching also. He even ended up getting to eat free ice cream bar that one parade truck was handing out.
Both boys loved the fire trucks, and Dominic really liked seeing the old tractors too.
Dominic liked seeing "Old McDonald"
Another favorite... tractors!!! 
I thought this was interesting - according to our local newspaper, Nambe is made in China now, and has been for the last year. I'm a little disappointed about that - not sure I'll be buying it for weddings like we have in the past anymore.
FINALLY got back up in the air this weekend! Also did a good job keeping my currency up for another 90 days as I logged a total of five landings. Garrett & I took off from 52F and headed down to Forth Worth Spinks. This airport is just around the corner from Tia & Uncle’s house, so Uncle came to the airport to fly with us! I flew right over his truck on final.
At my standard ten miles out, I contacted Spinks Tower and informed them of my intentions. The controller asked me to report a left downwind for runway 34L. Right about this time, I noticed some heavy rain in the area. Nothing at the airport, but within a few miles of the runway. No thunderstorms or convective activity either. Just some spots of heavy rain.
Heavy rain looks funny from the air. When you are sitting at ground level or driving, heavy rain makes you wet and reduces your visibility. We’ve all been in those situations where you are driving down the road and come up on a heavy rain shower. We have to slow down, maybe put the wipers on high, and squint to see as much as we can.
The difference from the air, is that you can actually see rain falling at altitude (like Springfield & I did a while back) from a distance, and you can also see the areas on the ground where heavy rain affects visibility.
Or rather, you CAN’T see them.
Where trees and roads should be, just a grayed out splotch exists… even if you are below the cloud deck. It’s very strange, and while I had good visibility of the runway when I finally did reach the downwind leg of my approach, those splotchy areas were getting closer to the airport and were easily within two miles now.
The controller called me and said that there was rain in the vicinity of the airport, but nothing actually AT the airport. Based on where I was in the pattern, I was confident that I would make it down before any of that massive rain came my way.
I was correct!
As I was turning base, I heard a noise I had never heard before in the cockpit. It sounded like the “Tic-Tic-Tic” of tiny sleet on a window. I looked up and noticed little rain drops on the window. Still had great visibility, noted the rain, and turned final. Landing was uneventful, and once I was on the ground and clear of the runway, the tower had me contact ground control to taxi over to the FBO. Once we were there, and totally shut down, the rain picked up. Finally made it to the airport, but not the blinding rain that I was seeing from the air. Heavy rain for sure, but still with enough visibility to be VFR.
After the rain subsided, we picked up Uncle and did a flying tour of Mansfield. Then decided to do a couple of touch & go’s at Arlington, and finally headed back to Spinks.
After a bathroom break for the little one, it was time to head back before any more rain decided to pop up! We gave hugs, then got out of Spinks, heading to 52F. The flight back was uneventful, though I noticed that about 10 minutes after I landed, the other 172 from the flight school landed in the wrong direction with a slight tail wind. The runway at 52F is only 40 feet wide, and 3,500 feet full length.
NOT a lot of room for error. In fact, according to the NTSB, no fatalities have happened since 2004, but there are six accidents on file (one of which is that other SportStar), four of which are landing accidents. No incident occurred, but man, you gotta be careful about that stuff.
Anyway, good flight even if I didn’t climb over three thousand!
Well, this Monday I wrecked our car. Tuesday the Insurance company informed us it was totaled. Wednesday morning we had the check in hand. That is some fast turn around. The police report isn't even done yet. Wednesday we rented a car for the day and went car shopping. We actually didn't go very many places. The whole process was so stressful. We ended up at a Jeep/Chrysler/Audi/Kia dealership. After 4 hours of negotiation we walked away with a Jeep Grand Cherokee for exactly what we wanted to spend. It is older, but for the money we had, we couldn't find much. The price went down by almost $1400 from when we walked in. That is amazing. I guess in these times the dealerships really are desperate to move their vehicles. Yes it is a bit of a gas hog, but not as bad as a lot of suv's. We decided we could really use the room with our expanding family. On top of that it had an excellent carfax. The max score is 79 and it scored a 73. That is amazing for a '98.
I've got this great new mobile phone. It looks like this:
It plays music and videos, has a decent fixed-focus camera, and a J2ME Java interpreter. It has a MicroSD card reader which is now holding the 8GB MicroSD card that used to be in my Nintendo DS. It has a rudimentary calendar and todo list, and I'm finding that it does everything I've ever wanted from a handheld computer.
I've been using the unfortunately-name-collisioned MobiBook to read ebooks. Despite T-Mobile disabling local filesystem access from Java MIDlets, there's a way you can get an application to read a predefined filename in the JAR file as text. I have 6 or 7 books loaded up on it now. Although the screen is tiny, I've found that as long as the book interests me, screen size becomes irrelevant 20 seconds into the book.
I've also been hacking the source to be more like what I want. Working in Java has been frustrating, but not as bad as I expected. So for I've made the following changes:
It's a cool program and with these changes I think it's heaps better. I'd like to be able to pin the backlight intensity to a certain level, and to cache the book length so I don't have to repeat the inefficient calculation process every time.
It's not perfect: it doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and I can't hack most of the software. But I got it for free, and I'm very content with using it for music, snapshots, scheduling, ebooks, and of course, as a telephone. I think I'm going to keep it for a long time.
Here are some Gumdrop pictures of Nina, Sara, Ginnie, Ava, Mary and Ada! Sorry we missed you Jason, and good job everyone!
If you click on these, they're all full-size so they look good printed out or downloaded.
Ginnie had her second (and final) dance recital today. I think she had a lot of fun getting out on stage with her class. The whole recital was entertaining to watch, with some cute and hilarious moments courtesy of the really young kids, like Ginnie's class.
First off, I got an education in making a ballet bun with short hair (thank you, experienced Dance Moms). I'm fairly certain after learning how to do this that this is why God invented hair nets.
This was my first try. Not bad.
Ginnie's class were Gumdrops in the ballet (they did Candyland themes).
Mary, Ava, Ada, Nina, and the bottom two are Ginnie and Sara.
Ginnie with Neale after she came off stage. We got to stay and watch the entire recital the first night. She was thrilled with the big girls' dances, and ran backstage afterwards and handed out hugs to them all. Apparently that was a hit.
Baga and Bada came up to watch the matinee today. Ginnie was very happy about that!
Me with my Gumdrop girl.
Oshkosh EAA air festival. Lots and lots of planes.
It's pretty pitiful that I only managed to write one blog in the entire month of April. Here's a recap of our recent life.
Goodbye big blue
Travis sold his Landcruiser to one of his buddies. It was really just a storage locker in our garage, and since it gets only 8 miles/gallon, not the most efficient mode of transportation. The bonus is that we have a lot of room for all the kid's toys.
Bike
Dominic has a new red bike. Battle Ground bicycle is going out of business, which is sad. Everything they have left in the store is 60% off. His new bike has great padding, really sturdy training wheels and rust proof alloy wheels so it should hopefully last through our 2 boys.
I just love all of Dominic's funny expressions!!
Lolo
Great-Grandma Lolo is in town. I can't believe she's already been here a whole week!! She's out at my Aunt's house in Oregon City now, but we'll get to see her again for a few days before she has to leave.
Work
I took the boys to visit with my former co-workers for coffee 5/6. It was really good to see everyone. I can't believe I haven't visited since I was barely pregnant with Elliott, but guess we're pretty busy. Dominic took a shine to Abdi, probably because they're on the same wavelength with jokes. Elliott really liked Kathryn. Of course, when Elliott decided he wanted down, I spent more time chasing him than chatting, but that's what you do with 1 year olds.
Party
We had Elliott's 1 year birthday party at Lewisville Park 5/2. We visited 4 or 5 times with the boys in April because the weather was so beautiful. We were able to reserve a shelter that had picnic tables, a grill, running water nearby, and a fireplace for heat. The weather held out just until we were packing up to leave. The only bummer is that I was so busy with kids and food and friends that I forgot to give my camera to anybody. I don't have a single picture of the party. Not. One. Hopefully those who may have taken some will share one or 2 with me??
Through a local beekeeping mail list I have just been contacted by another beekeeper in town, with two top-bar hives, who offered help. I don't know why but this feels like a huge relief. Amy agrees.
It seems I went about this all wrong. My first step should have been finding other people who already have bees. We could have bought a nucleus from a gal just north of us, and mentored with one of the many people in town who keep bees.
Better late than never I suppose.
I stayed home sick yesterday so I was able to go with Amy and Ginnie to her soccer game. First, we had to talk Ginnie into leaving her new best friend, "Towel Bum" (a dish towel), in the car for the game. Then we had to remind her repeatedly to go to the coach. After her fifth water break in 3 minutes, we started to take her to the car.
On the way to the car, she had a change of heart. We ran back to the game and she played for maybe a minute before she decided she would rather spin in circles in the middle of the field. After around a minute of spinning, a kid kicked the ball her way. When she saw it coming toward her, her eyes opened wide like she was in a panic, and she made a bee-line for us with her arms spread open in the "hug me" position.
She spent the rest of the game playing on the playground.
Ginnie comes from a short line of soccer failures. When I was in youth soccer, I was sick for two games. Those were the only two games my team won. I am told that I was much more interested in the lawn than the ball. And thus began my lifelong disinterest in competitive and group sports. It seems Ginnie is taking after her old man, and I'm honestly not sure how to feel about it.
Well here is the latest in my pregnancy. I am 20 weeks now. I am on modified bed rest but headed for full pretty soon. I had contractions a couple nights ago that sent me to the hospital.
On the up side, all of a sudden this little one is kicking like crazy. The baby is a boy! We are naming him Trent Jacob (TJ) Greb. He is a serious pill already, heheh.
Last updated:
July 04, 2009 05:22 AM
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