Butterfly Garden in July

Elliot, William, my mother, and I went to the butterfly garden in Gainesville, Florida this past July. I just found the pictures that we took while we were there and I realized that we'd never posted any of them. Here are a few of the best ones:

16 Weeks Pregnant

I'm so glad that maternity-style clothing is popular this season. It saves me money. This shirt/dress thing only cost $6. Woohoo!

14.5 Weeks Pregnant

Let the belly pics begin! I'm starting to get "poochie," as one of my coworkers pointed out. The baby is still down low in my belly, but it's pushed everything up and out, so I'm beginning to look pregnant. And FEEL pregnant. None of my pants fit me anymore, despite the fact that I weigh the same amount that I did before I got pregnant.

That About Sums It Up

Elliot: William, please stop... William, stop that right now... If you don't stop, you'll get a time out.

William: Time out AGAIN?!?!

And that about sums up our weekend.

Introducing Mocha

My sister, Sara, and her husband, Bret, adopted a dog in June. Mocha is a sweet and lovable mixed-breed. William loves her and she's great with kids. Not so great with cats and other small animals-- apparently she used to live on a farm and they got rid of her because she kept going after the chickens.

Isn't she cute?

Scribblenauts: Sweet Hat, Sweeter Game!

I pre-ordered this game called Scribblenauts and as a reward received this neat hat.

The main character in the game wears the same sort of hat. The game is about a character who creates things by writing words in order to solve puzzles. There are over 22,000 words that the game will recognize and render, with varying levels of interactivity. It is incredibly fun and interesting to me. I have already derived enough fun from this game to justify the asking price and I am only 1/5th done with it.

Here are some examples of things that can be done:

-Shock a cadaver and watch it come to life as a Zombie/Frankenstein style monster!

-Make a Pegasus-creature and glue a steel spike on its head so you have a super, flying, unicorn! (You could always spawn a normal unicorn but then it wouldn't fly.)

-You can make a seed then use some fertilizer on it and then water it to grow a flower!

-You can feed donuts to cops until they go to sleep so you can sneak past them, or distract people with money.

The game's not perfect by any stretch but it is great and much more fun than frustrating. It is for the Nintendo DS or DSi. And I would recommend it to anyone who can have a fun time by exploring the relationships that this game has programmed in.

Here is a link to the Scribblenauts section of a site that aggregates reviews: metacritic.

Elliot's Family

Elliot's Mom's side of the family, minus Elliot, his sister, and a cousin.

That's Elliot's Mema sitting in the center of the couch. Soon to be GREAT-Mema! :)

Baby In My Belly

Elliot and I are going to have a baby! I'm 11 1/2 weeks along right now.

Elliot and I are very excited. William is, too, and in his excitement he has declared himself "pregnant." We tried to explain to him that only girls can have babies, but he doesn't want to hear it. He tells us when his baby is sleeping and sometimes that it's drinking a bottle (inside of his belly).

William's pregnancy is going remarkably smoothly, but I've had some pretty bad morning sickness. I think it's beginning to get better, though.

As soon as I start to get a belly I'll post some pictures!

Firemen Do Not Put Fire On People

The other day a fire truck went racing by our car. William loves fire trucks, so Elliot and I pointed it out to him.

"They gonna go put fire on the bad guys?"

"What? No! Firemen don't put fire ON people. They put fires out. They bring water to fires and spray the water and put the fires out."

"They put fires out?"

"Yes."

"Then they put the fire on the bad guys?"

"No. They just put the fires out with water. They only put water on things."

"Only water?"

"Yes."

"WATER on the bad guys?..."

I still don't think he gets it. We'll have to work on that one.

Waina from Nigeria

I never did make a post last May when Elliot and I made Waina from Nigeria. It was the last World Peas recipe we were able to make before we became foster parents. We really need to get back to that project, but it's harder to do now that we have small children around. You know how picky kids can be about eating.

Waina is basically an omelet. Really easy to make. You're supposed to serve it with bread, and so we bought some fresh baked bread from the bakery at the grocery store. Yum.

Squirrel Momma Drama

Elliot and I went home for lunch yesterday. When we walked outside to leave, we noticed a little commotion on top of the hood of my car. On closer inspection, we saw that a baby squirrel had wedged its head underneath one of my windshield wiper blades.

I've never even seen a baby squirrel in real life before! It was tiny and the poor thing was so scared. It had a very high pitched cry.

Elliot and I saw the momma squirrel running away. We decided to just leave the baby alone. But after a few minutes, we could see it was in a lot of distress and couldn't free itself. Elliot went back and lifted the wiper blade.

The little squirrel was too tiny to hop off of the car. I'm not even sure it could walk well on its own. The momma squirrel was in a tree nearby, watching her baby, but she wouldn't come back for it. We waited 20 minutes and then called the vet. The vet's office said that we need to wait a few hours before we can be sure that the mother won't return.

Elliot and I decided to go back to work. We put a big rock next to the wiper blade that was proped up, to make sure it didn't snap back down and hurt the baby squirrel. We never touched the baby, so we were hopeful that the mommy would return.

After a couple of hours at work, I was beside myself, worrying about the squirrel. I was afraid that the momma wasn't coming back, that a bird got the baby, that it was too hot on top of my car and the squirrel was roasting. I asked Elliot if we could go check on it.

We drove back home, preparing ourselves for the worst. But when we got there, the baby was gone. There was no blood or anything to indicate something bad had happened. I'm very hopeful that the momma came back for her baby. Good thing we were home to get the baby's head loose!

AirZooka

This is one of Elliot's favorite toys. The AirZooka. It shoots a big puff of air out of the barrel. It doesn't hurt-- mostly it surprises people. Elliot was playing with Aimee and William the day this picture was taken. They were blowing bubbles and Elliot was shooting the bubbles (and the kids) with the AirZooka. The kids loved it. Elliot loved it. Good times.

Bye, Aimee

Aimee went back home today. It's strange how much quieter our house is now!

I'm kind of afraid that we'll never see her again. Her new family seems extremely uninterested in maintaining ties with people from her past. Personally, I think that's a very bad decision, given the fact that there are a lot of good, positive people that have helped her along the way. I hope they change their mind.

Congrats to Laura & Thomas!

My baby sister got engaged today! No date has been set yet, but as of right now, they're talking early next year.

Aimee is visiting us for a week!

Yay! Aimee gets to stay with us again! Her new family is taking a trip to another country and they didn't have time to get her passport processed before they leave. So we get to do respite care.

It's so funny to see her and William back together again. Here's part of a conversation they had at dinner last night:

Aimee: My best friend is Evan.
Me: Is Evan a boy or a girl?
A: A boy.
William: Evan's a girl.
A: No, a boy.
W: Girl.
A: Boy.
W: Girl.
A: Boy.
W: Girl.
A: (Bugs Bunny-style switcheroo) Girl.
W: Boy.
A: Girl.
W: Boy...

Just an average work day.

I consider my work day to start when I leave the house with William and my wife. When I leave the house I usually find some mildly interesting nature on the ground.

Today, it's cute little mushrooms.

Then Mary and I drive William to school and ourselves to work.

After we park we head in opposite directions.
I enter my building through this door.

I like to walk through the shop to get to my office.

Here we are. But before I start working...

I need to eat some breakfast.

Rice Krispies with almond milk.

I used to eat un-frosted mini-wheats, which I like more, but I ran out and had to use up the Rice Krispies.

Ok ready to work; hey what's that message say?

Another day another error. No problem; by the time I try again, it's working.

First things, first: I check my email.

Then I code fixes to the problems I just heard about in emails.

Eventually, its time for lunch, which Mary and I often eat together.

Then more programming, this time on long term projects.

Sometimes I take a short break to look at my picture.

Eventually I have finished a new application or website or fix and I start on a new project. At the end of the day, I leave. On the good days, my work life is as simple as that. I like helping out and creating things and solving difficult problems. Lucky for me almost all of my work falls into one of those categories.

P.S. Sometimes there are meetings.

"I make you happy?"

William: "I make you happy?" (When William does something good, we often say something like, "Thank you for following directions. That makes us really happy!")

Me: "Yes, you do."

W: "Elliot? I make you happy?"

Elliot: "You make me very happy."

W: "Mary? I make you happy?"

M: "Yes."

W: (Still in a sweet, pleasant voice.) "Ya'll make me mad. And I say AAAAARRRGGGGH. Then I'm mad at ya'll and you make me mad. But I make YOU happy. Um.... I make you happy? Mary? Elliot?"

Thanks for the honesty, kid.

Flamin' Hot Funyuns

I like to eat Funyuns. I think they taste good, so when I saw a new "Flamin' Hot" style I thought I would give it a try.

Inside the bag I found a little surprise. Usually funyuns are shaped, more or less like onion rings and this morsel was shaped more like a rock or nugget of some kind. "Interesting," I thought "this guy didn't make it all the way through the onion ring shaper or whatever." "It sure is coated with a lot of Flamin'n Hot brand flavoring," I observed. Then, when I picked it up to eat it, I realized that it felt much heavier than a funyun should feel. So, naturally I squeezed it untill it broke. Turns out it is just a giant lump of pure flavoring. Other kids I knew at school have had similar experiences and now I have had one too! There's one thing I can check off the list of trivial things that I always wished I could experience. Just though't I share.

Swimming Lessons

William has completed his first round of swimming lessons. He's doing GREAT! He can't swim on his own just yet, but he's made a lot of progress. Some of the kids in his class were afraid of the water, afraid to go to the instructor, afraid to try new things. Not William! He was always the first to volunteer. The instructor called him "Mr. Ambitious."

The goal at his class level is to be able to swim back to the edge of the pool if he should fall in accidentally. In Florida especially, that's a very valuable skill to have. We signed him back up for the same class level, and hopefully by the end of this class he'll be able to swim on his own.

A Rare Picture of Clotilda

This picture of Clotilda is unusual for two reasons. First, her eyes aren't glowing. In just about every picture that I have of Clotilda, it looks like her eyes are made of LEDs. Second, she's sleeping. Clotilda is a very active cat-- even if we come home during the daytime for lunch, all of the other cats will be sleeping, but Clotilda is up playing.

Maybe she's a robot...

Aimee has moved to her new home.

Elliot called Aimee's adoptions case manager yesterday to ask her when Aimee would be moving to her new home. "Oh, I'm glad you called!" she said, and then proceeded to tell us that this would be her last night in our home. WHAT?!?!?! We sure didn't get much time to prepare ourselves and let the kids know what's going on. The news caught us off guard, but we made the best of it. Aimee and William are too young to really understand what we were telling them, but we tried to explain it as best we could and let Aimee know that we love her.

We dropped Aimee of at preschool this morning, and that was it. We delivered her belongings to her case manager at lunchtime. She'll keep going to the same preschool as William for a little while, and I think that will help with the transition.

So we just have William right now. We'll let you know when we get our next placement!

Forever Family

Aimee will be leaving us soon. :(

She's being adopted by a family that has been waiting a long time to have the opportunity to bring her into their home. Aimee has been "transitioning" into her new life by having lots of overnight visits with the new family and spending time every day with her new mother when she visits Aimee at school. Aimee seems a little confused, but overall I think that she's doing well with the process.

We're so happy for Aimee that she will have a nice, loving family to permanently call her own. Of course, we will miss her. I miss her already when she's gone on her overnight visits, as does Elliot and William. Despite our own feelings of loss, though, it will be a very happy ending to the rough start in life that Aimee experienced.

One time at work, there was a hot air baloon.

And we rode it.

It only takes like 20 min or so to boot up.

Colorful, pretty.

You have to unload one person then load another person immediately, for weight management reasons.

Wink if you're ready for takeoff!

Up and Away!

If you look up from inside the gondola, this is what you see.

Also there were some bouncy things for kids.

Wheeeeeeee!

The "hot" part of hot air baloon really lived up to it's name. It was way too hot up there to be comfortable, what with all the fire and it being a super hot day. It was totally worth it though even though we were tethered and didn't quite get above the trees. It feels like a really slow elevator and is probably the least frightening flying experience achievable so far.

Yoinky Laser Eyes

Sleepy Radar

Happy 4th of July :)

William's advice to us today:

"DON'T EAT FIREWORKS!!!"

Disney

I took the kids to Disney's Hollywood Studios last weekend. We went with my sister Sara and we met up with my cousin and her family. William and Aimee had a great time!

A couple of days after the trip, they were singing together in the car. The song was to the tune of "Jingle Bells" but they changed the words. First Aimee started singing "Tinkerbell, Tinkerbell, Tinker all the way..." So William chimed in with "Stinkybell, Stinkybell, Stinky all the way..."

I'm so glad that Aimee was smart enough to ignore him.

Nolan Update

We saw Nolan last night at a foster parents' meeting. He's still as cute as ever. His foster mom said that he's doing well, which is good to hear. He's definitely grown in the month since we've seen him!

Make Funny

Today we were watching a show with the kids about bugs. A segment about bees came on.

"Look, William, the bees are making honey!"

"Bees make funny?"

"HONEY. You know. Honey. You eat it. It's food. Bees make food that people can eat."

"Ha ha ha! That's funny. Bees make funny."

Chiquita

Unable to find any stickers within arm's reach yesterday, Aimee pulled the stickers off of the bananas and stuck them on my shirt.

*Sigh*

So This Is What Parenting Is Like...

I have been decorated with stickers from the waist up ever since Aimee arrived. She seems to have an endless supply of stickers. At the salon the other day, as I was getting my hair washed, the hairdresser said, "Oh, I got some conditioner on your face!" and tried to wipe a shiny bumblebee off of my cheek that I had forgotten was there.

And William is just full of silly things to say. At the library last weekend, we walked by the elevator as it was opening to let some people inside.

"Ooooh! an ALLIGATOR!" he said.
"That's an ELE-VATOR," I corrected.
"NO! an ALLIGATOR!"
"That's an elevator. It takes people up to the next floor of the library. It's for people who can't climb the stairs."
"IT'S AN ALLIGATOR! AN ALLIGATOR POTTY! ALLIGATORS GO POTTY IN THERE! ALLIGATORS GO POTTY ON THE NEXT FLOOR! AN ALLIGATOR! AN ALLIGATOR!"

People nearby were laughing. Oh man. What could I do but say "oh, okay" and hope he stops yelling?

Aimee!

Last night we received another foster care placement and so now we have two kids at once! Our new friend is a 3 year old girl, and we'll call her "Aimee."

William and Aimee got along surprisingly well (thank goodness!). They shared their toys and played nicely together and used good manners. Let's hope that they keep it up!

Flowers for William

Our friend, "Aunt Kathy," sent some flowers to congratulate us and to welcome William into our home. Thanks Aunt Kathy!

Here's a picture I took while William was rearranging the flowers:

Good Bye, Boogie Cat

Elliot found our neighborhood cat friend, who we call "Boogie Cat" (although his owners have a different name for him), dead in our driveway yesterday morning. I'm so sad.

We've known Boogie Cat since we moved into this house, and he had been living almost exclusively in our yard for about the last year. Ever since his owners got a second pet cat. Boogie Cat would be outside our front door every morning and every evening when we came home from work. It's weird not seeing him there. We love that little guy.

The thing about having animal friends is that most animals don't live so long compared to humans. I'm always very upset anytime one of my pets dies. But the sadness I feel now is only because I've had so many good times with Boogie Cat. I miss him.

R.I.P. Boogie Cat.

Stopping to Put Gasoline In the Car

On the way home from picking William up from school today, I noticed that I needed to put gas in the car.

"William? I'm going to stop real quick and put gas in the car. Then we'll go home." I want to keep him informed about his environment, since so much has changed for him lately.

"Gas?"

"Yes," Elliot said. "Gasoline. It makes the car go."

"You're put gasoline in?"

"Yep. I'm going to put gasoline in the car now," I said, as I was turning into the gas station.

"No! No! No!" William was very concerned all of a sudden.

"What's wrong?"

"Don't put gasoline on me! Don't put gasoline on me!"

"Not YOU. In the car. I'm going to put it in the car."

"DON'T PUT GASOLINE ON ME!!!"

It took Elliot and me a few minutes to realize why William was freaking out. He has a really great vocabulary for an almost-3-year-old, so it's easy to forget that he doesn't understand the world the way an adult does. He thought I was saying that I was going to put gasoline inside the cab of the car. He didn't understand that there was a place on the outside of the car that lets you put gasoline inside a special compartment of the car without putting gasoline on people.

Poor little guy. I got him so worried.

It was awfully cute, though.

Our Second Foster Care Placement

Elliot and I picked up our second foster care placement after work yesterday, a little boy we'll call "William." He's almost 3 years old and he's so smart. What a vocabulary!

William will probably live with us for a while, so I'm sure you'll see more posts about him soon.

A few pics of Nolan!

We don't want to show his face though so you will have to take our word for it that he is cute as could be!

We had a really nice time with Nolan. We learned a lot and we hope that we will be able to see him again in the future.

Our First Foster Care Placement

Elliot and I are watching an 11 month old boy (we'll call him "Nolan") for 6 days while his permanent foster mother takes a vacation. It's called respite care when one foster parent gives another foster parent a break for a short time. So, for our first placement we're doing respite care.

We picked Nolan up from his day care yesterday. He's gorgeous and so sweet. Our first night together went pretty well. He took about 45 minutes to fall asleep, but then he slept through the night. (Yay!) We had to wake up a little early this morning, but we're not nearly as tired as we thought we'd be. Lucky us!

Approved to be Foster Parents!

Mary and I have just been approved to be foster parents! Hooray for us! We applied in February and we were approved last week. We will let it be known as soon as we know anything else about who the first foster child or children will be. We are approved for young children either boys or girls and we are approved for up to two at once.

A Trip to the Fort

Last weekend we found out (the fun way) that we don't have to go all the way to Mississippi to see gun toting reenactors.

I present: Mission San Luis!

One time home of some Spanish and Native Americans!

Doesn't look like much but during its heyday, this was probably equivalent to a Goldfinger-era Fort Knox.

Every so often some of the people of who currently work there give little demonstrations of what life must have been like for those old timey settlers. First up, a march!

Picking your nose is timeless.

That mound over there is actually a giant Apalachee Council house.

Not too shabby. Next we got to go inside the actual fort and check the place out.

Once inside it became clear that 8 bit space invaders was based mostly in reality.

This building was used to shoot at aliens.

Next they showed us how they might defend themselves:

It was neat to see all those old guns shoot. They had matchlocks, flintlocks, hand held cannons called "hand guns" and a normal cannon. The leader of the reenactment told the crowd about how innacurate all the weapons were. He said that they didn't even aim their guns too hard, turning their heads away at the last moment so that they wouldn't get hit with sparks from the guy next to them. Sometimes only a few of guns would go off and sometimes they wouldn't hit anyone for a couple of minutes, but fortunately for them the ammunition dealt astounding levels of damage to its victims, vaporizing them instantly.

A cannonball grazed this guy's ear.

Also they sometimes would urinate on attackers climbing up the walls.

All in all it was a fun and informative trip.

Hope to see you there sometime!

Clotiiiiildaaaaaaa!!!

So. It's not just dogs that chew on shoes. :(

Habitat For Humanity

This past Saturday Elliot and I participated in landscaping a Habitat For Humanity house here in town. A group of people from our work, pictured below, worked together with others from the community to rip up grass, lay down sod, plant trees and shrubs, mulch, and water the yard. It was hard work, but it was fun.

Happy Anniversary, Us!

Today is Mary's and my 2nd wedding anniversary!

567∞!

I love my wife and I love my life!

Mississippi Beach

Recently, while we were in Mississippi, we decided to visit a beach. One thing that we noticed about this beach, was that there seemed to be a lot less wildlife than we were used to. No beach grasses or trees and hardly any birds.

There was this one armadillo(not pictured), but it was dead. We even looked for shells but couldn't find any... at first.

What sort of creature could possibly live in such a desolate, lonely place? Must be bitter and probably ornery, crabby you might say.

You'd be right: a hermit crab.

And eventually another one.

The sand was really nice though.