Ethan, the Caterpillar Whispererer just now

They ate all my parsley!  But he was thrilled to discover them.

2nd Lost LOST Toof

Ethan's 2nd tooth, his self-named "Bendy Toof," came out this afternoon. And, we lost it. (He swallowed the first one a few weeks back.) Here he is today, wearing tears from the "Ewwww, BLOOD!" moment a few minutes earlier, and holding the tooth, that he DROPPED IN THE BROWN GRASS moments after this photo was taken. We tried to find it, but it was definitely a needle in a haystack....Tooth Black Hole: 2. Ethan: 0.

baby lizard, just now....

Tomato Thief!

Caught this box turtle in my garden yesterday afternoon.  Then, we thought we'd offer him a tomato just to be nice.  He walked away from it in his futile attempt to flee.  So, after a while, we put him on the other side of the fence so he could go down to the swamp for a drink.  We hope this tiny guy is happily munching on a whole lot of mosquitoes right about now!

Number 700! December Moments

THIS IS POST NUMBER 700!  Just noticed that.  Been blogging since February of 2008. Crazy how time flies.

I've had the time over break to go through some keepers I took before Christmas.  So, here are some random December moments.

Enjoying an 80° December 6 day

Sweet dirty feet

Turned Palmettos into reindeer for about 40 friends and family members (enjoyed it, save the moment I hot-glued my forearm to one of them.... hello, 2nd-degree burn).
Here's some of the crew posing beside a non-decorated tree on December 8.

December 12: Bathtime sweetness

Just a moment during cleaning on December 21 that I wished our shoes would forever descend in size like this. Sigh.

Watching a movie upstairs with friends on December 23 as their parents took in some football downstairs

Cousin Eddie

Yesterday evening, we had the current and former band directors and families over for a white elephant exchange.  It had been months since the boys and I had seen most of them and it was great fun catching up!  Many laughs were had. We even saw Cousin Eddie.

In Our Yard This Month

 

 

 

Keepin' it Real Sunday

It was a rainy weekend.  So today, we stayed inside the entire time, which involved a deep clean of the house, among other things....

my three cute gamers

the sock pile from beyond, before we played the sock matching game, which andrew won, hands down.
and.... why do we own so many socks? 

Last Day of Break

Fourteen amazingly glorious days of being off are coming to an abrupt end tomorrow morning as the entire family heads back to school.

The superheroes who protected us so well this break will need to hang up their costumes once again.

Ethan's school was actually open today so we took him there.
He needed  the structure and was excited to get back to see his friends.

So, Andrew enjoyed the day as an only child.  We watched some Star Wars movies.

We also got out my vintage Star Wars toys.

We have all enjoyed the time off, but are mostly ready to get back into a routine.  The rest of the school year will fly by.

This Just In: The Lost Hawaii Files

In our summer cleaning/reorganizing, Jon and I recently uncovered a roll of 35mm film used in our dive camera in Hawaii back in March. We are all so spoiled in today's world with the instant gratification afforded to us by the digital age; so the one-hour developing of this particular roll of film seemed as if it took eons. We knew the photos were from our recent trip, but of course we had no clue what we actually shot, or even if any of the shots turned out.  Here are our six favorites.

Aha!  PROOF that Mickey and Boba Fett actually made it into the surf at Waikiki

Catamaran cruise we took one evening

Jon being silly on the cruise...

Oh, goody... another one of me checking those air gauges

Dave and me on the lookout for cool stuff

Me capturing a shot of one of those beautiful turtles

Spiders, I don't mind you...

... HOWEVER, if you are poisonous and living on our front porch, my husband will very abruptly send you and your offspring to spider heaven as he did just now with this lady.  Only non-deadly spiders allowed to live near our home, okay?

Another day, another abnormally large Black Widow living right beside your front door, I guess.

this morning's backyard discoveries

silly dogsnail

inchworm