Spooky

Since everyone is sharing spooky stories today, I'll add mine.

In the dark of night, when Sam and I are downstairs and everything is silent, sometimes one of us goes to put a disc in the DVD player.  So we push "open," and the tray opens, but before we can get the disc in . . .

THE TRAY CLOSES AGAIN!!!

Usually this happens two or three times.  It'll snap your finger inside if you're not careful.  And then, without warning, the tray will start working again . . . as if it never happened!!

5

Pumpkins

Abe's pumpkin looks like Abe.

Here are the pumpkins we carved this year. 

Sebby's is the scariest.

(Malachi just woke up; that's why he looks so weird.)  He drew his happy pumpkin face.

Daisy's pumpkin is a replica of her.  Do you see the resemblance?

Hee-hee-hee-hee.  Hee-hee-hee-hee.  Hee-hee-hee-hee.  Happy Halloweeen!!

(That's for you, Mom.)

1

Food and the senses

Sam and I have been trying to think of foods that exemplify (? I don't know the word I want---encapsulate?  represent? manifest?) each of the five senses.  Obviously more than one sense is involved in eating anything, but we were using this question as a guide: is this part of the food (the smell, the texture, etc.) an essential part of the experience?  That is, if that element was missing would the experience of eating still be basically the same?

I feel like we didn't come up with good ones for all of them, but here are some of our ideas:

• Sound: rice crispies; bacon (frying, and the crunch when you eat it); popcorn; root beer floats
• Touch/texture (in the hand or in the mouth): angel food cake; hot chocolate (cold chocolate milk=totally different experience); cream puffs; toasted English muffins; artisan bread
• Smell--(lots of foods NEED their aromas.  But which need them most?): onions/bacon frying; wassail; roast beef (in crock pot, for example); chocolate chip cookies; cheese; oranges/grapefruit
• Sight: rainbow jello; vegetable bars; kiss cookies; aebleskiver (little Danish pancake balls); braided bread; colorful salads; colorful pizza
• Taste--(what foods have a distinctive/intense taste that kind of overshadows the other elements?): lemon curd; truffles; curry; gingersnaps; pesto; chocolate basil cake

Okay, so, what did we leave out---what foods represent (? still not happy with the word choice) each of the senses for you?  And question #2: do we think about food too much in this family? :)

6

Weekend Daisy

Some pictures of Daisy dear.  Don't you just want to eat her up?

4

Funny ha-ha

Have you ever read a book where someone is trying to say that something is "funny," meaning strange, and they say,
"That's funny.  Not funny- ha-ha, but funny- peculiar."

"Funny ha-ha."  I don't know why but that really bothers me.

Also, I now know it was a mistake to get Seb a pair of red underpants.  He likes them so much that he won't change them.

Also, I think it's weird that they do advertisements for Blu-ray DVDs [It is "blu" without the "e", right? Like that makes it super cool or something; "We're so futuristic, man, we've totally moved past 'e' endings!"] with a split screen, to show you the difference between regular DVD and blu-ray: like, this side is the bad blurry regular way and this side is the cool hi-def blu-ray way---except you're watching this all (bad side AND supposed blu-ray-only "good" side) on a regular DVD, right?  So doesn't that sort of undermine their whole point?

6

Canyon Leaves, Part II

I love this because the colors are striped in rainbow order---my favorite! Nature is not always so obliging :)

Sunday we got to have Grandma come with us for a picnic.  It was such a beautiful day!  We walked around for a long time finding sticks and rocks and enjoying the leaves.  I am amazed that all the canyons are so gorgeous!  Where have I been all my life?  I had no idea there were so many different beautiful places so close to home!  Here is where we had our picnic:

3

May be truncated

Sometimes I like abbreviating things.  (So you'd think I'd be "down with" the latest internet slang, LOL!  Unfortunately I don't know what most of it means.) 

Rach and I used to habitually refer to a certain hymn as "F.T.B.O.T.E." [That's Rachael, not Rachmaninoff.  Abbreviating has its perils.]  Sam, bless him, continues to delight me with the way he abbreviates as well.  Some of our standards:

• What on earth="What on E.?"
  
• Pacifier="Pacifee" or "Fee"
• Aged parent (an affectionate title)="Aged P." (via P.G. Wodehouse, see also "Eggs and B.")
• Egg McMuffins="Egg McMees"
• Pillow=Pilaf (?)
• Camera="tramvai" (not an abbreviation . . . hmm)

What do you abbreviate . . . and what DON'T you?  (Michael Burns, for example---see comments)

4

Canyon Leaves, part I

We were lucky to have gorgeous, summery weather this weekend.  We had a campfire on Saturday and a picnic on Sunday.  Here are some pictures from Saturday.

0