Hmmmmmmmmmm

Thieves among us

We woke up to a beautiful day on Saturday, cold but sunny. Everyone was excited to go cut down our Christmas tree!
We bundled up and headed out to the boondocks.
This year we decided to go to a different farm and we were in for a treat!

Giant haystacks for climbing, with tunnels underneath!


A big ole slide! The kids couldn't get enough of it!


A wagon ride out to the fields! Even the Lawyer was smiling!


We trudged, we sized them up, we chopped down a beauty!


The kids argued about who got to haul the tree back to the wagon (really)!


There was free hot cocoa and cookies in the barn! Fake horses to climb on!


Lewie really wanted this "LADY HAT" he found in the gift shop!


Happy little story, eh? When we went to pick up our tree (they provided numbered tags) to take it to our car, it was G*O*N*E!
And the wagon ride, choosing a tree, chopping it down and hauling it had to be repeated. Not so giddy this time!

Back to the Bowl-a-Roll

It's November ......It was rainy and chilly today .......where else would you find Tzuhsi and family?
No, we wouldn't even venture to Target on Bleak, Black Friday.

It was Black Bowling!

These 2, aka Water and Oil were up together. Oil cracked a joke ........

Water pretended to think it wasn't funny


Ana and Lew had a war over the matching green kiddie balls.


Here's Tzuhsi fine form ..........


A big draw to the bowling alley is the vending machines stocked with cheap crap manufactured by poorly paid workers in China



This one was a giant porkchop today. Seems that not getting a score of 200, like he gets on the wii, makes him "HATE THIS STUPID GAME."


Yup, a good time, all around.

A little child labor

Yesterday we went to the cottage to rake and winterize......... the children are thrilled when I announce we're going to Seneca in November............yeah, right.
BUT, it was a beautiful day, which softened the blow.
AND Pop let the kids play with the fire that was burning the leaves. Now THAT makes all the difference in the world. Raking was fun when they could rake the fire. What a grandfather.

This first picture is just for Suzie...... remind you of another photo??????


Lewie was in rare (ok, ok, his usual) form with his poses




and making everyone laugh


Frances was whining about going to Seneca until that fresh lake air hit her......


The girls kicked Goofy out of the picture......





No one enjoyed playing with the fire more than the Lawyer. It brought out her inner pyromaniac. In this shot she recreated the Santa Ana winds with her leaf blower. I was worried that someone was going to call 911. She generated a LOT of smoke. The kids loved it.

All the leaves are brown........

Last week we took a little ride into the country for leaf peeking. We went to a ski place and took a ride up the chair lift.



Lisa went with the "Twins" - poor sucker. All I got of them was this nice butt-shot



Frances stayed glued to Ana. Frances was convinced that one of them was going to fall from the chair and splat on the hill below.



After the ride we went looking for a place to have lunch. Strangely there was nothing available at the ski lodge. After weaving around the country roads and making everyone carsick, we ended up at McDonalds - blech, close to home!

Something I don't like to see on my weather map!

Indignaties

Blame it on Mamacita..... she's the one who told me that Build*a*Bear clothes fit HER dog..........


Look at that embarrassment ..........


Wait until you see the Hula Girl costume

I have 52 years to practice .......

One hundred-year-old Ruth Frith competes in the women's shot put during the Masters Games in Sydney, Australia, Sunday,

My strange Lawyer

The Lawyer is USUALLY a clever girl. She likes to putter around the house and can always create a diversion for herself outside when the children are in their usual hyper states. This time though, she went too far. I present to you, Exhibit A:

hmmmmmm, aren't those DEAD flower heads unusually RED, you ask?

Exhibit B, more BRIGHT RED DEAD flowers:


Hmmmmm, a green leaf with a stray SPRAY of red? What could be going on here?


She even got some RED on her arm and had some splainin to do when she went to court. Yup, she went to court with a splotch of red on her arm.
Now do you understand the yoke I carry? She thinks it brightens up our dying gardens. I think she's a whack job.
She is absolutely unrepentant.

UPDATE - Apologies to the Lawyer for the "Whackjob" comment. She is SUPER CLEVER and I love her!

Stanley and Stanlie have been studying up on Japan in preparation for their trip with Aunt Suzie. They are on their way to Aunt Suzie's mailbox!

Poor Stanley. He's a perfectly normal boy until one morning he wakes up flat. After his parents peel the incriminating bulletin board off of him, Stanley must adjust to life as a pancake. He is a boy who takes this kind of thing in stride, though, and soon he's enjoying the advantages of squashedness. Sliding under closed doors is fun, and it's gratifying to be of use to his mother when she drops her ring through a narrow metal grating. Expensive plane fare to California? No problem. Svelte Stanley folds comfortably into a brown paper envelope. There's even room left over in there for an egg-salad sandwich. But Stanley's true moment of glory comes when a gang of thieves begins stealing paintings from the Famous Museum of Art. The case seems hopeless--until our two-dimensional hero saves the day. Here is one boy who doesn't let his profile-challenged body stop him from living life fully--that is, until his brother finds a way to help him become well rounded again.

What to do when you have too much time on your hands

Buddha shaped pears are seen in an orchard in Weixian county, Hebei province September 10, 2009. Hao Xianzhang, a local famer, spent six years to perfect the process by growing the pears inside moulds, local media reported. The pears cost around 50 yuan (7.32 USD) each. Picture taken September 10, 2009.

and in other "interesting" news.......
People With Issues

Three physicians, reporting in The Canadian Journal of Urology in July, described how they handled an emergency-room patient who arrived with a ballpoint pen in his urethra. The man, 57, had assumed that the insertion would be pleasurable, and when it wasn't, thought initially that maybe the pen was not in far enough. After pushing further, to even greater discomfort, he thought that if he pushed it all the way through, it would exit in his rectum, where he could remove it more easily. (Actually, they're not connected.) Doctors removed the pen with the same procedure used to remove kidney stones. [Canadian Journal of Urology (July 2009) via Neurotopia blog, 8-28-09]

Good Morning........Whatup?

Potty Wipes

For years I have been buying "potty wipes" for the kids.......... ok, I like them too. We have been having some plumbing problems lately; water backing up and sluggish drainage. A plumber came out last month and snaked out one of our drains but it didn't seem to improve things. Today he came out again and cleared the main drain. What did he yank out? PILES of wipes!! EWWWWW! Seems the little suckers get snagged onto cast iron pipes.
Now I think we should get a bidet ............... gotta be fresh........

The Graduates

Last night the karate kids had a graduation. Elly and Lewie got their greenbelts and Ana got a new stripe on her red belt.

The Little Dragons went first. They lined up in their old belts.......


Then they showed off (?) their freestyle moves.........




Then they got their new belts.......


The Juniors went next ........


Ana didn't know that she had to do a kata with the other level ones but she did a great job......


The Grand Master Flash stole the show. After some of the Juniors cracked boards with their feet, the Big Sensei Boss attempted to crack eight concrete blocks with his hand. When he failed to crack them, Lewie yelled out "I KNEW HE COULDN'T DO IT!"


He decided to try it with an elbow strike and voila!


We went out for a celebratory ice cream afterwards and the kids wanted to know how the Sensei did it. I was trying to explain how you focus all of your energy into one point and they looked at me like I was slow and didn't understand the question. Ummmm, it was magic? That satisfied them.

Just cracked me up ...........

DON'T


MESS


WITH


ANA!