Festive Olive Salad

20 green olives, w/ pimentos
1 oz olive brine
3/4c cheap vodka
1 splash of dry vermouth

Shake with ice, enjoy. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

New blog post.

Dinosaur Pizza.


Buccaneer nuggets.


Aw.


Levi is sooooo glad that he dialed 1-800-...


Ooooh.


And again. I wish I lived in this room.

Good Parenting

Every now and then I get the urge to do something so irresponsible, so terrible, so self abusive, that I wish someone would beat me over the head with a Dobson book screaming "No, you fool! IT'S NOT WORTH THE PAIN!!!"

That's right; I'm baking with the kids.
I have these visions of a Norman Rockwellesque bonding experience, but it almost immediatly degenerates into whing, screaming, open weeping...and then there's the noise the kids make! They fight, and push, and eat the raw dough, and lick the measuring spoons...ERG! They sit and pick little bits out of the formed cookies to test, then cry when their cookies come out of the oven looking like they've had small pox.

I JUST CAN'T STAND IT.

I have nowhere to put anything

Clothes, specifically.
What can I do?

Dining Room

Okay, so here's that window-mirror in the dining room: I started prying the glass panes off and the whole thing just kind of swung off the wall. Guess what was underneath?



Drywall! Nice, undamaged drywall. Mr. Legs remembers when the whole room was that color. The frame was just screwed onto the wall and connected at the top to the real window.


So we primed it and painted it 'Arabian Sands'. I think that wierd blotch in the photographs is the ghost of our electrical system (more about that later).


Here's the hutch, after I put all the school stuff in it.


And here's the whole thing with our pretty new table. I admired it for five minutes, then promptly covered it with a plastic table cloth, chewed crayons and a bit of old tomato sauce.

Pictures!

Tell Blondiekins that she is the most awesome niece EVER. I hope her teachers were suitably dazzled by her brilliance! I hope school gets more interesting soon; Have you told her the reason she's bored is because she's just so smart?

We went to the San Antonio Zoo several years ago, when Mina was little, and it was HORRIBLE. Every other enclosure was empty, there were no birds, the monkeys were old and depressed...It was bad. They've made signifigant improvements since then.
Here's our favorite animal, LaVerne:



She's a nice, polite goat. This is Mindy, who will sneak up on you and knife you in the back for a goat treat. Seriously.



There are about ten goats altogether, but the others are pretty non-descript.

Here is one of the black panthers (they bill them as 'black jaguars) wandering around. Normally they just lay there whining about the heat, but we went on a nice drizzly day and all the animals were up and about.



Here's one of the warthogs. This is the first time the kids got to see one, because normally they're all buried nostril deep in their mud pit. The Twin got a book awhile back called 'A Kiss for a Warthog', that had really cutesy drawings in it, so she couldn't understand why nobody would kiss the warthog; well, now she knows.






Here's the elephant with highly visible 'nibbles', as the Twin pointed out. We got to see her pick up a few tiny little seeds off the ground and eat them. You always hear about how dextrous their trunks are, but I had never realized how much like fingers those little pro-tubers on the end are.



Ducky's favorite animal is the 'High-NO'! She learned what they were by seeing a picture of a blue one on the propane tank canisters outside of Wal Mart. This is the animal she always wants to see.



I don't know, that's the skinniest darn Rhino I've ever seen. There's another one that's healthier-looking, but he was lying down that day, enjoying a little pool of mucky rain on the floor.



Here we are being Nile Crocodiles. Sometimes they lay facing the glass, opening and closing their jaws very slowly. The kids love this.



The hippos are not quite as cool as the High-nos.



Rocket really enjoys the aviary, because it has a giant replica of an extinct 'Elephant Bird' egg. It's a neat little building, theres some birds flying around loose. They live in a little indoor forest and if you go on a day when there are no other people, they will walk right up and stare at you.



I can't remember what these are called, but they were being all cute that day. Probably to make up for the fact that there was a mutilated bird in there with them last time.



And here's Ducky and Spiderman riding Swiper. I think they missed each other.

Stream of conciousness piece brought to you by...My conciousness?

I'm watching 'Rise of the Gargoyles' and contemplating how a bad french accent can make any movie seem a little awesomer. The Brit's a total pansy, of course.
Not much happening here. They've taped & mudded the boy's room, and hopefully will be back (tomorrow? Monday? Who knows!?) to finish the hallway. We moved the old table into the kitchen, under the breakfast bar thingy. It gives me room for my breadmaker, slowcooker, rice cooker, blender, and enough space to use as a counter. It's kind of nice. I think I will pack up the Fostoria and move it to the attic, so I can use the hutch for school stuff. MIL got us a new table that should be here tomorrow.
Tomorrow is also my first big freezer cooking day, hopefully it goes well. I have nine meals, doubled, plus the meals I made last week, so that should feed us for a month or two if I intersperse the freezer meals with beans. It will be nice to not have to worry about dinner prep. We are smoking again a little, but I don't think it will last. $8 a pack, I kid you not. Crazy.
The dogs got their flea meds today and are acting a little wierd. We've been walking again and they seem to have settled down. Swiper was a little nutty when I first got home. Zero has developed a nervous piddling problem, but only around Pete. I'm trying to work him through it. We've spent a lot of time at the zoo these last few days and I made the mistake of telling the kids that both male and female hyenas appear to have boy parts, which has made Cynthia convinced that Zero may, in fact, be a girl. Oops.
They have a solitary asian elephant that looks pretty bored most of the time, but last time she was standing right up near the fence and we got to see her give herself a dust bath. We have made great friends with a goat called LaVerne at the petting zoo, and I'll post pics as soon as I find the darn USB cord.
Also we were looking at the Green Jungle Fowl(precurser to the domesticated chicken) and we got to see one having some kind of a wierd seizure. We reported it to the zoo keepers and got thanked. (yay us.)The Dama Gazelles have two babies, one of whom was born on 9/11.

(This movie reminds me of the Dr. Who episode with the stone angels, only much less creepy. I think the main character was one of the computer nerds from 24.)

Awanas is going well, they seem happy to have us back. I can't believe how much dues are, but of course it's totally worth it. They grouped the Twin in with the same boy she had so much trouble with last year, but at least I'm a part of her group so I can keep an eye on it. I still haven't called about the new church, I'm a little nervous. Ducky is the oldest kid in the nursery and likes to be helpful. She tried to give one of the crawlers crackers last week. The nursery ladies like her, though.

(Why does every monster movie have a crazy priest in it? At least this one carries a sniper rifle, though. Give 'em Watts, boys!)

Mina has finished her math book and I will order her new one tomorrow. It looks pretty fun. I'm getting the supplies together to start her new school year, it looks like a whole truckload of fun. Painting and music and whatnot. Hopefully after she finishes her phonics we can start the english program I have that looks fun too. Once the boy's room is done we'll start going to the library again.

(So the monster's susceptible to UV light. Didn't Disney have a series based on this premise in the early 90s?)

Swiper's snoozing on my bed with Ducky, I guess he's too good to sleep on the floor now. He's having to re-evalute his role as the top dog since I got here. He likes to dig around in the trash, which wouldn't be such a big deal except that I threw a boiled chicken carcass into the bottom of the trashbag this morning, and he just discovered it a few hours ago, after I had piled quite a bit of nastiness on top of it. He also thought that he was allowed to take food off the counters, which led to an extremely uncomfortable situation involving emotional abuse and a wooden spoon. I think we understand each other now, though.

(Watching NCIS now...Is that Turk from Scrubs lying dead on the floor?)

It's supposed to rain tonight, I hope it does. Although technically it's now this morning. I lerv Fridays.
The backyard's covered in green stuff. I found a spiffy chinese-type teapot at Goodwill yesterday, and only realized once I got it home that (der) it didn;t have a handle. I like it though, so I just wrap it in a towl to pour the tea out. The kids like it too; I found some spiffy matching sake cups for them, so now we have a nice tea break whenever it seems appropriate. They like to put a mint leaf in each cup before we pour, no matter what flavor the tea is. This afternoon it was mandarin orange spice with a mint leaf on top. Bleagh. I think maybe I could rig up a real handle with a rope, and a hangman's noose on each side. I'll post pics once I get that stupid %^&*#$% USB cable.

(OK, not Turk. My mistake. Hmm, naming daughter #3 'Ducky' could draw some unpleasant associations...)

Got some more feeder fish for the fish tank. The crabs are doing well. I think they were a little dehydrated. Jack is enjoying his new role as top crab. I think that's it. Hope everyone's well.