Fall Festival

This past Saturday afternoon, we went to a Fall Festival. As you can tell from the pictures it was lots of fun, even though Jesse was at work that day, so he missed it and we missed him! Here are some pictures.

Jack is enjoying the pony rides!

Mama forgot to bring her favorite hat, so she substituted with a gift from the firefighters table!

Jack, Nathan and Chris enjoying Orange Creme sodas.

This is me trying to open my popcorn bag; Jack has already figured it out and looks very happy about it!

Nathan is playing one of the games.

This is Nathan, being cool at a friend's house on Thursday (Yes, I know this has nothing to do with the fair, but it's a cute picture, isn't it?)

Legos (by Abigail)

Well, the heat has moderated some since the last post thanks to several thunderstorms that came just near enough to tantalize us last night: no rain, but it is cooler! We're still spending most of the time indoors, though, and the boys have been building some wonderful Lego creations.

Samuel has been reading the Aubrey-Maturin books, a series set on board the British ships in the Napoleonic wars. This is what he built after reading the series: a ship at harbor. The sails are furled and a small boat is crossing to the ship, loaded with men and new cannons.

This is a better view of the ship, see the man in the rigging?

This is the harbor, you can see the cannons in the fortress wall and more down on the shore ready to be transported to the ship. Jesse added the palm trees in back.
At the moment, Sam is out back, leafblowing. Yes, it is August, but the drought is killing the leaves. If we don't get rain soon, the trees will start dying.

This is the living room of Jack's Lego house. His big screen TV is the size of his couch!

This photo didn't turn out very well, but you can see that it is the kitchen and dining room. The kitchen is the blue room and the dining room is red.

Yes, that is a polar bear in Jack's stable. And yes, those are apples for him to eat. And the door leading into the house is open. Hey, it's Legoland!

This is a garden that I built.

Heat wave (by Abigail)

Well, today's the day! When we get to 100 degrees today we will have broken the Alabama heat record. Nine consecutive days of 100+ temperatures! We tied the record yesterday with eight days, and we'll probably break today's record tomorrow...

It's pretty hot. And dry. The trees are really starting to suffer, sometimes it looks like Fall outside with all the dead leaves. The dogs are spending a lot of their time in the garage now, but the other animals are having more trouble escaping from the heat. A couple of months ago we had a pretty good rainstorm and I put some buckets outside to collect rainwater for my plants. But the frogs got to it first, so now it's become my tadpole pond.

Just a plastic tub with water and plants, but it's become an oasis to all sorts of interesting creatures.

No, the tadpole's haven't hatched yet. These are tiny little tree frogs that I've seen in my garden before, but they really love the tadpole pond. They're so small that it's really hard to get good pictures of them, it's like trying to photograph the detail in a dime. Plus, they don't stay in place for very long!

This beautiful male dragonfly believes that he owns my whole garden. When I try to get close to him, he sticks his tail in the air to look bigger and glares at me!

This picture didn't turn out very well, but you can see that it's a small lizard on the top leaf and another tree frog down below.

Some of my guests are more dangerous than the others. This is a red wasp, they're big and pretty scary looking, but they carry less poison than the smaller yellow jackets. They're pretty cool to watch, because when they want a drink they can fly down and stand right on top of the water and take a drink.

This is a bloom from one of the water plants I have in the pond. The markings remind me of peacock feathers.

Yesterday, of course, we celebrated Maddenholiday. For those of you who have not heard of this classic holiday, it was invented two whole years ago, as a day to celebrate the release of the new Madden football video game. Maddenites, as die-hard fans of the game are called, have their own website to talk about the game; songs, based on classic Christmas songs, with lyrics about the game; and a blog to discuss new ideas to introduce to the game!

No, we are not Maddenites and do not often play video games, but we did enjoy last year's version of the game and we will use any excuse to have a holiday! We bought the updated version yesterday afternoon and we really enjoy the improved animation. We had been planning on going out to dinner that night, so I made a football cake to eat when we got home.

Trip Days 5-13a

Days 5-13

June 1-9

White Sands, NM to Phoenix, AZ

Over the next few posts I'm going to go through our time a Grandma and Grandpa's (The point of the trip, remember). We arrived Friday, the 1st and left Saturday, the 9th. Most of the time we spent swimming and eating and talking.

We always build at least one jigsaw puzzle when we go to G&Gs.

Finally...Pictures!

I finally figured out how to get the pictures compressed, so here are pictures of the trip to White Sands National Monument. I tried to get a video of us rolling down a hill of sand but I got an error. I'll try again later.

Trip Day Two: TX

Day Two

May 29, 2007


Tyler TX to Monohans TX

450 mi


Today we ate breakfast at the Tyler campsite. It sprinkled a little bit but not bad. We did have to drive through some pretty bad rain storms once we got on the road. At one point a lightning bolt struck the road between us and the car behind us. Sometimes we were driving at 40 mph on the interstate. We stopped at Monohans Sand Hills State Park for the night and had grilled chicken and baked potatoes.

End Day Two

Back home/Trip Day One: AL-TX

We made it back. We got home Tuesday afternoon after a two week trip to Phoenix and back. It was a great trip. Over the next few days we'll do posts about the days of the trip (remember 'Countdown to Christmas'?). Today I'll do the first day of the trip.

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Day One

May 28, 2007

Birmingham AL to Tyler TX

500 mi

Today was the first day out. We left home some time between 8 and 9 in the morning. This is day in which we travel through the most states: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and some of Texas. There are no odd adventures to report. We eat breakfast in the van and lunch somewhere in Mississippi. Tyler is about 1/5 of the way in to Texas; it's half-way between Dallas in Louisiana. We pitch camp at Tyler State Park around 5 pm.

End Day One

New Sod pics

Well, it took me long enough. Finally here are the pictures of the 'laying-of-the-sod' event. The Easter pictures are still on the camera along with pictures of the what the sod looks like now. I'll post those later...

Yard work

Alright, I've got the pictures up from the first stage of 'Operation New Lawn'! Daddy talked with our next door neighbor (who happens to be a landscaper) before starting the project. He said that the first thing to do was to rototill the whole yard and add a layer of topsoil before laying the sod. Daddy tried out three rototillers before finding one that would work on the packed soil (our front yard doubles as a football field); he had to use the biggest one in the hardware store before he could turn up this dirt!

Harder than it looks!

Note to northern friends and family: check out the color of the dirt! Our neighbor was delighted to see "So much brown in it"! No good, black dirt here!

Nothin' like strolling along in the yard on a hot day with your iPod and rototiller!

Now, after a few minor incidents not worth mentioning (such as hitting the gas line!) the yard is being raked and leveled for the sod! Our neighbor told us that the dirt was so great that we wouldn't even have to add the topsoil! Whoo-hoo!

Break time! Our Spring Break is over, the kids have to go back to school and Daddy to work, but this Friday we lay the sod!