Smart Apple

Erin made the honor roll this quarter! We are all so proud of how hard she's worked in school this year: it shows in her grades and in her enthusiasm. She's learning so much, and it's fun to learn it all over again with her. Way to go, kiddo!

Whippy!

Scott sold his F250. And I sold my F250. And then we realized that we are in the process of moving and require a truck. So.... Truck. (This is obviously not my truck, but a reasonable facsimile thereof. But mine's flashier because it has a hood scoop. And I'm sure it's faster.) And, of course, I had a rock through the windshield already. Heavy sigh. I guess I can let Scott drive it now.

Trick or Treat

A hair for a hair ...

Scott has recently been channeling his inner Yeti (I'd say Sasquatch, but ewww, the connotations). As handsome as he is, once I start finding food and toothpaste in that damn beard, it's time for it to go.

So what, you might ask, is the answer to this dilemma?

I don't shave until he does.

I think he's going to shave tonight. We're all very excited.

Erin the Bookworm

Erin has developed a taste for books, which - according to a certain crossword that I recently completed - is actually called "bibliomania". We think it might be contagious.

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

It's official. After a few years of on-again off-again, I have broken up with my favorite author. In the beginning of our relationship, Jonathan was so edgy but still clever and entertaining; lately the edgy has developed into something more like uneasy gratuity and I just can't find it in me to care one way or another what happens to his characters. He's begun to make me uncomfortable, and I have to say goodbye. I'll miss you, Jonathan Lethem. It was good while it lasted.

Yes, we have some cab-i-nets...

...we have some cab-i-nets, today!

Apple Betty

This full figured and fantastically fecund tree is our neighbors', but this portion of it lives in our yard. Erin occasionally steals the apples, and it's fun to watch her make faces (they're, um, not quite ripe yet).

Smoke

Mmmm camera

That would be TEN POINT ONE megapixels. Yahoo. Now I just need to learn how to use it....

The Last Temptation of Fate

What I would like to avoid - but absolutely cannot - is mentioning that this picture was taken less than a week after Scott fell off the roof and busted his head. Oy.

The Kidd Shoots Again

Erin loooooves the camera. It's really too bad that it only holds something like 50 pictures; even that much memory only seems to last her about 20 seconds. A little abstract nature photography, a la The Kidd.

She does portraits, too!

This is Erin's friend Tori, who is stunning; Erin surprised her, took the picture, then took a picture of the computer screen where it was displayed. I thought it very clever.

Slap on the wrist!

I apologize for being so shockingly remiss in keeping up the blog - it's not like I have anything else to do...ahem. Updates: Scott's staples are out and his head looks as good as before (read: lumpy and balding, but still very handsome); Erin has a new computer which she received for her 11th - whoa - birthday. We tried to tell her that the birthday people couldn't fit it in, but she found a way around the bureaucracy and reinstated it. And so, 11. I'm taking a philosophy class, and if the Cogito (I think, therefore I am) is true, then I have ceased to exist. The house - oh, the house - is a very very very fine house. With grout in the tile, and doors sort of up, and baseboard heaters sort of in, and cabinets... still in the garage. We'll move in someday.

There will be more pictures, I promise, when I can figure out the settings on my new camera.

Spring

Okay, so it's spring at our house and Scott has once again set the bar for birthdays next year. Ooooooh, new camera rocks. It goes beyond rocking. It's way prettier than Bowie. And for those of you who have not been to the blog for a while, the head trauma photo is not for the faint of heart. I think I made Ericka puke...

Photobugs

Erin and I ran around the yard taking pictures this evening. Once we were both done with our homework. Or at least when I was done with my homework. I'm not sure they give you homework in the fifth grade. Doesn't seem quite fair.

Red.

Mmm, head trauma.

Scott decided today to take a flying leap off of his ladder. As you can see, it didn't work out so well for him. The paramedics were lovely, Arne Taylor (our neighbor) is my new hero, and Scott has no problems other than some serious soreness and of course this big giant gash on the top of his head. Oh yeah, and no skin on his arm..... I was totally disappointed that they didn't have to shave his head (I was so flustered by the time I got to the ER to meet Jim and Carole that the only question that I asked the nurse was "Did you shave his head?" Not "Is he okay?", not "Is he off the backboard yet?".... I'm not sure if he thought I was totally callous or just without any sense of propriety. Oh well). They also had to cut his shirt off, so they sent him home with some hot hot hot purple Pathways scrubs. (For those of you not in the know, Pathways is the local detox/rehab center. I wanted to parade him around town, but apparently he wanted to go home and take a shower. Harumph.) But he is well, showering as we speak, and everything will be okay. Thanks to everybody who offered their help, we love you all!

Ah, thirty four.

It's the end of April and time for the annual convergence of the Moseley-Schenck-Lefcourt households in celebration of Scott's birthday. Much fun was had by all, especially Erin, who had already attended a birthday party and was hopped up on soda and cotton candy and cake and will not be allowed sugar of any kind for at least a month. Scott got a new pair of shorts, a six-pack, a Crock-Pot, a gift certificate which will probably be used on more shorts, and a GPS (and Will, I promise they make them better now). All good things.

Simma, of course, went straight for the beer. Little lush.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Okay, so it's not quite the Sistine Chapel, but we did paint our ceilings today. Scott got rather significantly messier than I did, since he was the master of the paint sprayer, while I was just the lowly backroller. Sprayer or no sprayer, though, painting isn't very fun. Building your own house certainly teaches you to be grateful for your own cozy job that doesn't involve painting or drywall mud or PVC cement or pulling wire or lifting asphalt shingles on a daily basis. Aaaah, slinging wood.

The Old Man and the Yard

Will's fame will come posthumously when critics discover the text of his spare but touchingly human novel about hooking of a particularly giant and vicious bunny and being hauled around his unforgiving backyard for several days on end. And with that fame will come public knowledge of all the fistfights in Sicily and drunken revelry in Cuba. I'm sure of it.

Grandma Beth and Grandpa Will need second jobs

Mom has taking to spending her every other week off trolling for bunnies.

Will is a little more drastic in his bunny-luring attempts. This here Barney Loves You fishing pole has been rigged with 8# test line and the new hotness in bunny jigs: The Flashy Carrot. Both methods have apparently met with great success.

I'm with a T!

Scott and I went to see Miss Makita tonight. Granted, the sole purpose of our outing was not to see Miss Makita, but she happened to be the center ring in the circus that is the Contractor's BBQ. While I was standing in line to get a signed poster for a friend, a little boy of about three jumped in and said, "I'm Tanner. I'm with a T," and walked away with a big grin and a personalized Miss Makita poster. Hmmm.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus

Erin and Shackleton played a nice game of Wit's End this evening. They were neck for neck until Shackleton had a planetary size question. He was pretty sure uranus was bigger than anything else in the universe.

Are you gay?

So I was interested in which topics Google would pick out of my blog on their Blog-crawling expeditions, and so I set up the ads on the side (ignore them, this is merely a fun experiment) . . . The first ad that came up said "Are you gay?" I'm still trying to figure out where that came from.

Don't touch that dial!

For those of you just tuning in, this is what our house looks like from the outside. Big thanks to Kevin, Carole and Jim, Uncle Scott, Billy McKinney, and hugs (and maybe sloppy kisses) for the G&G boys for all their help. I'd hug the drywallers, too, but I hardly know them.

The front!

The back...

...and the artsy-fartsy shot.

Well Hung Drywall

Our rock is hung, and our house is starting to look like a house. Next we get to call the "Screw Inspector" (no kidding), and he will come and inspect our drywall to make sure it has enough screws. "Do you have enough screws?" he will ask. "Oh, yes," we will reply, "plenty of screws."

This is the living room/dining room big open area where we will live.

This is the kitchen from about the middle of it. It's ridiculously huge.

This is the master bedroom. Enjoy the lovely clerestory windows.

Merci beaucoup, Grandmere et Grandpere!

Les chats, the pigs, and Bob the Immortal Goldfish (he's older than all the cats - it's bizarre) would like to express their gratitude to Grandma Carole and Grandpa Jim who fed them and gave them attention while we were gone. And Lion and the Orange Ball would like to thank Rorschach for bringing them to the oasis.

Home Sty Home

Ahh, no more car. And Moggy and Sir Walter were certainly happy to see us, squealing and begging for carrots. Haven't seen hide nor hair of Shackleton yet (he's in a snit because we didn't tell him we were going to be gone for a whole week), but Chicken and the girls have been begging for attention and getting underfoot ever since we walked in the door.

Coulda won a Grammy, buried in his jammies...

Went to see King Tut this morning at the Museum of the Rockies. All replicas, but still very cool. No flash photography permitted, and Erin was a little too excited to hold still enough to get clear pictures. Guess we'll have to go back with a tripod...

Ericka is ... ahem ... right.

Hey look! It's the only other decent extant picture of the two of us, and Ericka took it and we love it. (This was last vacation, halfway up Flattop Mountain in Anchorage.)

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday . . . "

NEW THEORY: Monsieur L'Explorateur may have actually experienced womanflesh: but, like Wimpy (y'know, the hamburger guy from Popeye) or any other cartoon stranded on a desert island who invariably mistakes his/her companion for a giant hotdog or ice cream sundae (with jimmies and cherries!), he had been so long without the company of the fairer sex that everything he came across reminded him of this lack; this glorious, firm, well-balanced and rounded (?) mountain range could appear to him as nothing but an extraordinarily erogenous topographical feature. Ah, les tetons.

Now stripper- and bestiality-free!

Erin claims that these Carl Hiaasen books are the best - I guess they'll have to go next on my list.

Time for an anatomy lesson

Whichever Frenchman decided that these mountains should be called the Grand Tetons had never actually seen a female breast. Sadly, most of the National Park was closed (as was Yellowstone), but we were able to drive about 30 miles in to see this lovely breast, I mean, mountain. Eesh.

Dino ate your baby?

Camarosaurus. 100%.

There's a big ol' sauropod femur in this picture. It took us a while to find, too.

If you look carefully, under the dark overhang-y looking thing, there's a whole bunch of vertebrae. Also cool. The great thing about this park is that you can walk right up to this stuff and trip over it and rap your knuckles on it. The sad thing about this park is that it's horribly understaffed and there is no, I repeat, no trail maintenance.

The New Dr. Horner

Erin successfully completed the Junior Paleontologist program at Dinosaur National Monument today and received this fancy new patch. She got to do all sorts of fun things like math, and vocabulary, and critical thinking (all things she was very excited to practice while on vacation). And just ask, she could tell you all about the Morrison Formation.

Don't discriminate against the enthusiasm disabled

Fishy, fishy, on my foot

I got bored on the drive to Jackson. They're supposed to be fish. You can tell, right?