11/2/12 Yes Virginia, There Is a Halloween

So I know I kind of left it on a cliffhanger last time- the question on everyone's mind (and by "everyone's" I mean only me of course) was will she or won't she?  When we last left our heroes, ZB was refusing to wear the hat of her Halloween costume.  We'd been trying to get her to wear it for the entire month of October to no avail.  I wasn't sure what we were going to do if she balked on the big day.  It was quite the nail biter.

But! I am happy to report that on Halloween morning ZB got up and let me put her costume on her, hat and all, like it was no big deal.  Was it because she knew that it was finally the right day to wear a costume?  Was it because it was cold and she was glad to have a hat on her head?  Did she see that vein throbbing on Mommy's forehead and decide to cut her a break?  Who knows what goes through a toddler's mind?

Anyway.  I officially present...two scary and ferocious monsters!

And one of the ferocious monsters is blowing you a kiss.

ZB's costume was available commercially where all fine baby Halloween costumes are sold.  Last year Mom made her lion costume for her, but she (meaning Mom) is having back problems and can't sit at her sewing machine for any length of time, so no free sewing labor for us this year. (Boo!)  So I ran through all the costumes at Babies R Us and Walmart and Target and anywhere else that was like, "we sell overpriced poorly made polyester costumes that your child will wear exactly once!"  And this one caught my eye because it was just so gosh darn cute.  And made halfway decently.  And not obscenely overpriced.  So I was all, "Monsters it is!"

I mean seriously.  Have you ever seen anything cuter in your life?

The only problem was that the hat was a teeny bit big and the "teeth" kept slipping over her eyes.  Surprisingly (and hysterically), ZB's instinct is just to take off running blindly when this happens.  

My costume was a little harder.  Can you believe that they don't make adult monster costumes?  (Actually, that's a lie.  They do.  I found a couple on a website that sells fantasy lingerie.  For all your monster fetish needs, I suppose.  But it isn't really the kind of monster outfit that you can wear to take your child trick or treating.)  So I improvised.  Really improvised.  First of all, it's hard to find purple fur around here.  And if you do, it's something like $18/yard.  Which is crazy.  So I used a blanket instead.  I'm serious.  In the teen bedding section of Walmart, they have all these assorted furry pillows and throws and whatnot.  And they are much cheaper than $18/yard (I think $14 for two or so yards worth...and lined!), so I bought a purple throw and cut it up.  Instant monster fur.  

Secondly, I'm kind of self-taught when it comes to sewing.  My skill level is somewhere around "hem a pillow case".  I couldn't read a pattern if my life depended on it.  So I made up my own.  The skirt is based on a wrap-around skirt that I had in my closet, the leg warmers are just material that I wrapped around my legs, sewed the seams together and put elastic band at the top.  And the hat was me literally laying my head down on the material and tracing around it with a pencil for the size.  I'd sew some parts together, eyeball it, and go, yeah, those sides look mostly even.  Plus, monster fur is very forgiving.  It's so fuzzy you can't see the seams anyway, so no one has to know about that zig-zaggy spot where the sewing machine got away from me a little.  

Standing together, we are monsters.  Alone, I look like a giant purple bath mat with horns.

So those are our Halloween costumes for this year.  I think they turned out well considering that they were almost not to be.  Hopefully she'll remember how much fun she had this year and not fight me so much about it next year.  A Mommy can dream anyway.

Trick or Treat!

10/30/12 A Headstrong Toddler: Scarier than Freddie AND Chucky

Edited to add: This was actually supposed to post the day before Halloween but didn't due to "issues" with the dancing video on the previous post, which gummed up the timing on these other posts.  So...pretend Halloween hasn't happened yet.  

I love Halloween.  Love it, love it, love it.  I love thinking of costume ideas, and making costumes, and wearing costumes, and seeing other people in costumes.  (And yes, eating candy, if you're going to twist my arm about it.)

I mean, look at the following evidence:

And then ZB came along, and that just doubled the costume fun.  (Sadly, Tony has never been one for dressing up.  Even when we were first dating and he was still trying to impress me, he balked at the whole couples costume idea.  Sigh.)  But ZB wasn't old enough to protest, so she became my costume muse.

For example, last year:

I mean, you can't be a lion tamer without a little lion, can you?  But Internets, this year the best part about Halloween is in DANGER!  And not fake being-chased-through-a-haunted-house-by-a-guy-with-a-chainsaw-with-no-chain danger, but real danger!  Because ya'll, this year ZB does not want to wear her costume.

Dum-dum-DUMMMM!!

Seems that now that she is a toddler, she's got this crazy idea to "exert her independence" and that includes refusing to wear her little costume hat.  Seriously.  I've been "practicing" with her for the last month to wear her hat, and she just says "No! No! No!" and pulls it off.  Don't get me wrong, she thinks it is hysterical when Mommy wears it, or Daddy wears it, or CC wears it, but when it goes on her head, she wants nothing to do with it.

I am very concerned!  The costume doesn't really make sense without her hat, and if her costume doesn't make sense, then my costume doesn't make sense.  (And I spent a lot of time making my costume by hand.  Many a night I slaved over my sewing machine, and I don't really even know how to sew!)  So I'm not sure what to do.  If she balks tomorrow, then my plan B is to put her back into her wedding outfit and call her a princess.  But I'm really really hoping that Plan A (Wear the stupid hat!) works.

Does anyone know any good bribes that work on toddlers?

10/29/12 She Could Have Danced All Night

So...yeah.  I'm know it's been a few weeks since I've been on, and my excuse is that we have all been very very busy doing such awesome things that I haven't had the slightest free moment in which to write about them on the ol' blog here.  (And this is the part where, having just expressed your displeasure at my absence, you sigh and decide to forgive me and then rub your hands together in anticipation of reading all this awesome stuff.)  Except that, having completely set your expectations to ridiculously high levels, I have just blanked on everything that has happened to us in the last few weeks.

Wait! Wait! I just remembered something!

Last weekend Tony's sister Mary got married!  Originally Mary wanted ZB to be a flower girl or something, but the church has some kind of rule about no flower girls under five (or something like that...I can't really remember the specifics) so Mary asked if ZB could help me and Tony carry the sacraments down the aisle for the mass part.  And we said sure, that would be lots of fun, she'd love that, and Mom and I immediately went out and bought her the cutest little dress.  It has a silver top, puffy white tulle and sparkles and rhinestones, so you know it was a complete hit with the under 3' crowd.  ZB was so excited when she put it on that she kept spinning around and patting it and lifting the skirt part over her head.  (If that doesn't say yes to the dress, then I don't know what does.)  Then I found a kind of similar top (similar in that it was also silver, not that it had tulle or sparkles or rhinestones) and Tony a new sports coat, and off we went down to Charlotte where the wedding was being held.

Oh ya'll, the whole wedding was lovely.  The bride was lovely, the groom was lovely, the church was lovely, we were lovely...it was all just lovely.  The only thing that was slightly unlovely was that when it came time to do our part, instead of holding Daddy's hand and walking down the aisle to show off her pretty dress, ZB suddenly decided to go boneless and refused to stand on her own two feet.  And since people kind of frown on you just dragging your toddler behind you like a sack of dirty laundry, I ended up carrying the gifts, and Tony carried ZB, and her little dress was all scrunched under his arm and no one could really see how adorable it was.  (Which we all know is why everyone came.  Not to see the bride or groom or anything, but to see ZB's sparkles and tulle. Am I right?)

Notice how Mary was a good girl and walked down the aisle with her Daddy, so everyone was able to see her pretty dress.

Of course, ZB overcame her shyness as soon as the wedding was over, because then we were headed to the reception, and there's nothing that that girl loves more than a PARRRR-TAAY!  There's just something about her when the music gets started.  Her toes start tapping and all of a sudden she is off like a shot, headed towards the dance floor to get her groove thing on.  And trust me, she totally stole the show too.  At one point I looked up and everyone else had formed a circle around her on the dance floor and clapped as she got down with her sweet toddler dance moves (read: jumping, random arm waving and spinning).  She is a dancing queen.  And who knew that size five black patent leather Stride Rites were such great boogie woogie dancing shoes?

She enjoyed getting down and funky so much that we had to physically carry her off of the dance floor when it was time for the Bride/Father and Groom/Mother dances.  She was really miffed about it too.  She honestly could not understand why the bride and groom didn't want to share their special moment on the dance floor with her.  Luckily, we were able to temporarily distract her with some wedding cake so that she'd be all sugared up and ready to go again when they called for group dance time.

So that was our weekend.  Aunt Mary and Uncle Brett got married.  We discovered that the high ceilings in the church make great echoes when you yell really loud in the middle of the ceremony, (and also that being whisked out and into the cry room off the lobby is much more fun than trying to sit still in a pew with Mommy and Daddy).  And we learned that when there's a party going on, little girls can completely forgo sleep.  All they need is a dance floor and a good beat, and they can dance all night.



Edited to add:  Sorry for the delay in posting this.  For some reason, blogger refused to load my video.  It would load part of it and then freeze, causing great weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I FINALLY compressed it enough to load, but it took sweet forever and a large chunk of my hair.  All that is to say, enjoy the video.

Edited again:  Okay, apparently the video didn't load after all.  Another large chunk of my hair is now gone.  However, the video loaded just fine on facebook, so if we are facebook friends feel free to watch it there.  Meanwhile, I will continue to insult Blogger's mother for refusing to upload a simple video. 

10/3/12 Gettin' Our Bounce On

Last week Groupon had a deal for 4 passes to a place not far from us called Bounce USA.  It's basically a warehouse full of moon bounces and other inflatable games, and since ZB likes those kinds of things, I said yes please to the groupon and today we went for the first of our bouncy house adventures.  I call the following Dark Side of the Moon Bounce: A Bouncy Adventure in Picture Form

This is the special toddler area...age 2 and under only.  Not even adults allowed.   Tiny tyranny at its best. 

It has a ball pit!  We love ball pits!

Look Mom!  Ball pit angels!  (Seriously, it was a good 30 minutes of ball pit! Ball pit! Ball pit!)

I was finally able to drag ZB away from the ball pit and into a bouncy house.   She's a great bouncer...

except for times like this.  Face plant!

There's a toddler slide.  We very carefully climb to the top...

Eye of the tiger, baby.  Eye of the tiger.

Ready! Set! Go!

Wheeeeeee!

Back to the ball pit! Did I mention that we love the ball pit?
(So much so that I think I'm going to have to break down and put the at-home version on our Christmas list.  My poor living room will never be the same).  

Once we mastered the toddler slide, we took on the giant slide together!  Here's Mommy and ZB at the veeeeeeeery tippy top!

Action shot!

Zb was all, "Oh my gosh that totally blew my mind!  My whole short life flashed before my eyes!  
It was awesome but I never want to do that again".

Quick bouncy time-out to ride this rockin' (literally) Harley.

There was an inflatable batter's box where the ball floated on top of a jet of air.  ZB thought this was magic.

And finally, ZB's favorite part of the whole trip.  Inflatable bouncy houses and ball pits are fun, but nothing beats pushing a button and watching the water shoot out of the water fountain!

9/11/12 ZB's Flag

So here it is, September 11th.  

ZB has been learning about the flag in her Mother's Day Out class.  She did this during craft time.  While I suspect that she had a little help gluing on the stripes, the stars are all her doing.  I ask you, have you ever seen such masterful sticker work?  The slightly mangled yet shiny gold stars say so much about the juxtaposition of triumph and struggle in our lives.  Her use of space is refreshingly unexpected.  In short, I'm pretty sure she's brilliant!

8/30/12 Crock Pot Lasagna

Hey. So I'm doing this thing where I'm trying to cook "real" food more and rely less on nuking a frozen pizza pocket in the microwave for meals.  But because I hate hate hate to cook, my sole saving grace is the crock pot.  Toss some stuff in and leave it alone for a few hours.  Then magically pull out beautiful homemade food that wows Tony and entices a certain picky little girl to eat.  That is my kind of cooking, my friend.  So I picked up a couple of crock pot recipe books from the library, and I try a new one out every week.  And because I am a thoughtful and polite hostess, I am willing to share some of my crock pot adventures with you.  (It's like those dinner and movie shows where they tell you how to cook a dish and then you get to watch a movie while it cooks!  Only with blog entries instead of movies!  But still, kinda the same thing!  Kinda!)

Anyway, I tried this one last night, and it was pretty and easy and tasty.  Toss together a salad and some garlic bread and you are guaranteed to impress your friends and family with your awesome Julia Child-like ways.

Crock Pot Lasagna!

(Note: This recipe makes enough for two to four people, or in my case, two people, a picky toddler, and enough for leftovers for lunch tomorrow.)

1 pound (16 ounces) ground beef
1/2 cup diced white onion (Note: I used a teaspoon of onion powder instead...seemed to work just as well).
1 teaspoon minced garlic (Next time I'll use more garlic.  It was okay like this,  but we like lots and lots of garlic in this house.  Up to you on how much you like it and if you're expecting any romance later).
1 (24 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup water
1 (15 ounce) container ricotta cheese
2 cups mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 whole egg
2 Tablespoons fresh parsley or 2 teaspoons dried parsley
6 uncooked lasagna noodles (Be sure and get the no boil kind.  Apparently there's a boil kind and a straight to oven/crock pot kind.  Who knew, right?)

1) In a large skillet brown beef and onion. Add garlic and cook for one minute. Drain. (Mine took longer than one minute.  I guess just brown until it's brown).
2) Add spaghetti sauce and water and simmer for about 5 minutes. 
3) Mix ricotta, 1 1/2 cups mozzarella, 2 Tablespoons Parmesan, egg and parsley in separate bowl. 
4) Pour 1 cup of spaghetti meat sauce into a 4 to 6 quart sized slow cooker. Place half of the noodles and half of the ricotta mixture on top of the sauce. Cover with 2 cups meat sauce. Top with remaining noodles (If the noodles don't fit exactly break them to fit) and cheese mixture and meat sauce. 
5) Cover and cook on low for 4 to 5 hours or until noodles are soft.  (Mine was ready in 4.  5 hours may give you soggy noodles)
6) Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of mozzarella and remaining Parmesan. Recover with the lid to melt the cheese and let it sit for 10 minutes before serving. 

Note: Do not overcook and don't try to speed up the process by cooking it on high. Works best with a 4 to 6 quart size slow cooker.

Ooooooh Yummy!

Cheesy noodley meaty deliciousness! 

Toughest critic says "More please!"

7/19/12 Hair Today, Gone...Well, Today

When the weather gets tough, the tough...chop off all their hair.  Well, maybe not the tough- they probably don't even sweat when it gets hot.  But the quirky do, so this Quirk went straight to the salon and went, "It's 100 degrees outside! Get it off my neck! Get it off! Get it off!" and hoo boy did they ever!

Jared, the most awesomely awesome stylist ever (and available at StudioVisage in Market Square for my fellow Knoxvegas peeps) was all, "Ohmigod honey, with your cheekbones you are just going to loooooove this haircut!"  (And before you think I'm stereotyping male hair stylists, know that that is exactly how Jared is and exactly what he said and I love him for it). And then he cut off all my hair. But in a good way.


It's the first time I've had bangs since I was six, and I have no idea what it will do if I let it air dry and go curly (although Jared assures me that it will look "just fahhhhhbulous" curly) but I like it. It's fun, it's kicky, and it's off my neck for the summer.


And now the big reveal:


(Oh but first, ignore the horrible photography.  It was one of those hold-the-camera-up-at-arms-length-and-click self portraits.  And I'm standing by the front door because that's where the natural light was and I have no makeup on and apparently I really need to get a better night's sleep because the dark under eye circles are like zombie apocalypse much? But you don't care about any of that because you're supposed to be admiring the hair anyway).

So yeah, the hair:

The side view.

The back view.  Notice no hair on the neck.

The front view.  Remember that you're ignoring the no makeup and looking at the hair.

So that's my hair (if anyone has made it this far because I know the topic of my hair is just RIVETING and all).  But if you are interested in a new look and if you have cheekbones like mine (at least, according to Jared) then you might want to look him up and let him have a go with your locks.  I promise you'll look faaahhhbulous!

(Just, you know, make sure you get a good night's sleep before you take the picture).

7/5/12 More American than Apple Pie, Stars and Stripes, and Freaky Robot Fire Dogs

Well hey there Internets!  I hope everyone had a wonderful July 4th yesterday!  Personally, we had an absolute blast!  Mom and Dad's neighborhood had a parade (and being on a golf course, everyone decorated their golf carts), and then a big cookout, band, demonstrations from the local fire and police K9 unit, and finally swimming in the neighborhood pool.  ZB loved loved LOVED every single second of it.  In fact, we only took her home after she was so exhausted that she fell asleep (although she managed to hold out for an hour and a half past her usual nap time) and when she woke up (three hours later) she was mad that she was at home instead of still at the party.  She is a little party animal, that one!

First, the parade.  Mom stayed up until 3am the night before in order to decorate the golf cart.  Ya'll, these people take this parade seriously.  There were 26 golf carts in the "Best Decorated Golf Cart" Competition, and you've never seen so many flags, streamers and balloons in your life.  Here's our cart:

And ours was one of the more subtle ones. 

On the cart: Mom, ZB, myself, two Yorkies, and one sweaty Uncle Sam
who was just forced to run up a big steep hill behind us.

Here we are in the parade.  That's my Dad in the giant Uncle Sam hat, hanging off the back.  He and Tony were originally supposed to walk behind the cart with the two dogs, but after the first big hill, the dogs rode on my lap, Dad spent most of the time hanging off the back, and Tony raced ahead to the cart in front of us who was handing out Popsicles to the people watching and snagged a couple for himself.  Still, we are quite the patriotic sight, no?

Tony and Dad, post golf cart chasing but still looking patriotic.

And me, having actually been smart enough to ride in the golf cart from the beginning.
(Hey, it was 97 degrees out...I'm no dummy).

Anyway, we all had a lot of fun waving and yelling to the people lining the streets, and ZB clapped and cheered because everyone else was and she loves it when people clap with her.  Sadly, we did not win Best Dressed Cart (there was actually a tie for first between the cart that recreated the Statue of Liberty on the back and the cart that transformed itself into a rocket, complete with smoke trails), but that is okay, because we actually did win both Best Dressed Kid and Best Dressed Pet!

Note the cuteness just oozing out
of her.

Here we have ZB sporting her lovely Hello Kitty Patriotic shirt, a custom-made white skirt with netting overlay and red, white and blue stars at the bottom.  She has accessorized this with her sparkly red shoes and red sparkle hair clip.  (Actually, Mom also made a hat for her to wear, but it was so hot that the poor kid's head was drenched in sweat every time we put it on her).  Now, I may be a little biased, but Internets, that kid stole the entire show.  She was so adorable and happy and excited about the whole thing that everyone who saw her loved her.  In fact, the local paper took her picture and put her on the front page!  Her cuteness is a force, people!  It is not to be denied!

And now I have a trophy that reads "Best Kid 2012" to prove it.

Speaking of cuteness, may I also present the winners of this year's Best Dressed Pet!  Mom and Dad's Yorkies, Brutus and Brandi, are each sporting doggie T-shirts, reading "Patriotic to the Bone" and "I love the USA", respectively.  Brandi is also wearing red, white and blue stars in her hair.  But I think the kicker was the little tiny sequined Uncle Sam hat that Brutus was modeling.

Because is there anything more adorable than a tiny dog in a tiny top hat?  I think not. 

After the parade ZB hightailed it over to the local fire department's truck where the firemen immediately made her their chief (complete with hat and everything!).  They also had an animatronic talking Fire Dog named Sparky that kinda freaked me out (no doubt due to repressed childhood nightmares about our Teddy Ruxpin trying to kill us) but had ZB totally mesmerized.  The other kids would come up and look at it for a while, maybe talk to it or touch it and then move on, but for ZB, the world outside Sparky the Fire Dog ceased to exist.  She'd probably still be there, rooted to the same spot, had the fire department not eventually packed Sparky up and headed out for his next engagement.  (Let's just hope she forgets about him before Christmas.  Something tells me that Sparkies may be hard to come by for the private consumer). 

Mommy, can we have a freaky robot dog with a grating mechanical voice and weird blinky eyes please please please please PLEASE?!?

Finally, after stuffing ourselves with hot dogs and hamburgers and (I kid you not) 38 different types of baked beans, pasta salads, potato salads, chips, corn on the cob, watermelon, and enough cookies, brownies and cupcakes to put a diabetic into a coma just by looking at it, we decided to hit the pool.  And it's a good thing that ZB has such fun grandparents because by this point I was ready for a nap in the sunshine, but ZB was still going strong.  She splashed, she played, she climbed everyone's swim suit like she was a spider monkey.   The entire day was like ZB's personal version of heaven.  (Think about it: A parade, a trophy, a hot dog, a cupcake, a creepy talking robot dog and a pool.  Nothing else could compare.  It is a one year old dream come true). 

So yeah, I suppose you could say that we had a pretty great day.  It was good to see such a nice turnout for the parade and picnic, and it was a great way to honor not only our active service men and women, but also our veterans that were in the crowd.  Not to mention make it into ZB's top 5 favorite days of her life EVER.

America, we love you and salute you.

6/11/12 Our Very Classy Pop-Up Picnic, or Alternatively, The Time We Were Almost Eaten By A Bear

So I trust that everyone had a good weekend, right?

We here in the House of Quirk actually did something other than our usual weekend routine, ie spend the evening watching tv in our pjs.  We actually got all dressed up and attended a pop-up picnic at World's Fair Park on Saturday night.  (I know! With other people and everything!  And some people that we didn't even know!  Which would technically make them strangers!  For several hours!  Over dinner!)

(It's like we were body-snatched by party-going extroverts!)

(Extroverts that use a lot of exclamation points!)

Anyway, the downtown YMCA was doing a fundraiser by hosting a "dinner in white" pop-up picnic. (What makes it a pop-up picnic instead of just a regular picnic is that no one knows the exact location of the event until about an hour before.  Then a mass text or email or whatever goes out and everyone converges on this secret location all at once. It makes it more spontaneous that way, hence the popping up part).  Like I said, ours was a dinner in white too, which means that in addition to eating dinner outdoors with people he did not know, Tony also had to wear a nice white button up shirt and khakis instead of his regular Saturday night pjs.  So yeah, happy camper there.  But he's a trooper, and more importantly he had no choice, so we all dressed up in our fancy white finery and packed up our picnic basket and headed out to the secret location.

(Ya'll, Tony grumbling about his shirt notwithstanding, we were so cute in our matching white outfits!  ZB wore her Easter dress, and Tony wore a short sleeved button up white summer shirt, and I wore a white gauzy dress that Mom and Dad picked up for me on their last trip to Mexico.  Pair that with our authentic picnic basket that someone bought us ages ago as a wedding present, and we looked like one of those families in the J Crew catalog.  Just add giant oak tree and tire swing.)

It turns out that the secret location was on a picturesque bridge in the 1982 World's Fair Park in downtown Knoxville.  And while there wasn't an oak tree or tire swing, there was a big fountain and a rocky stream and pretty lights everywhere, so it was quite lovely anyway.  And the tables!  The tables were all set up and decorated with pretty china and real silverware and candlesticks and flowers and whatnot, and I turned to Tony and was like, "We are in a J Crew catalog!  I always thought picnics that looked like that were just make-believe to make the rest of us feel like we weren't classy enough!"

The secret location for our picnic at dusk.

We had a good sized crowd there, and festivities kicked off just before sunset.  Each table had a different menu, and ours had ham and grilled chicken and broccoli rice casserole and bread and fancy cheese and cold peach soup (which in my opinion is more like a dessert than a soup because it is sooooo tasty).  I'd spent the previous 3 hours carving up a giant watermelon and making hundreds of melon balls and shapes with cookie cutters, but I think the effort was well worth it since it seemed to be a big hit with the guests.
ZB stuffed down some bread and cheese (she's partial to Gouda), but was really too excited to eat much.  (Bless her heart, she's a natural party person.  She spent most of her time running from table to table, greeting people and charming them with her bubbly cuteness.  I have no idea where that outgoing personality came from).  Add in the lights and the water and the fountain and the little boy that was roughly the same age and the party was a total hit in her book.

ZB and her Grandpa, goofing around at the picnic.

So we were very sophisticated and elegant with our picnic party...and it wasn't until we got back home later that night that we found out that a 300 lb black bear had been roughly a block away the whole time.  (Yes, you read that correctly.  Somehow a fully grown black bear wandered down from his mountain home and into downtown Knoxville where he sauntered around the UT campus A BLOCK AWAY FROM OUR PICNIC FULL OF EASILY ACCESSIBLE AND POORLY DEFENDED FOOD.  Who knows?  Maybe he was on his way to the picnic when animal control caught up with him.  It's like somehow we fell out of our J Crew catalog and into a Yogi Bear cartoon.

And I'm the idiot holding the picnic basket.

But!  The bear, despite being within sniffing distance of our culinary delights, did not crash our picnic, and we did have a lovely time, and we all looked very classy doing it, and the food was delicious, and we were able to raise money for a good cause.  I look forward to doing the whole thing again next year.

Just maybe without Yogi and/or Boo Boo this time.

10/22/11 Yard Sales and Other Deadly Sins

There's a church with a reader-board sign across the street from the entrance to my neighborhood. The church likes to put little witty and thoughtful sayings on it, and I like to read them as I'm pulling out of my neighborhood. That is until the other day, when they put this one up:

"He who thinks he is without fault has another yard sale".

And I was like, "Hmmmm. I'm not sure I get that one. Are yard sales spiritual no-nos? Yard sales are of the devil? Or do they mean that people who have yard sales have faults? Is yard sale metaphorical? Do they mean that the junk cluttering up our lives is a fault? Or that trying to sell your junk to other people is a fault? I was just telling Tony the other day that we needed to get rid of some of our miscellaneous flotsam, but I'M CERTAINLY NOT GOING TO HAVE A YARD SALE NOW!"

Anyway, this sign bothered me for days. DAYS! And maybe you're all smarter than me and you've already figured it out, but I was completely clueless until Tony called me on his way back to work today.

Tony: You know that church sign that's been bothering you?

Me: You mean the yard sale one? Why? Did you figure out what it means?

Tony: Yeah. It needs a period.

Me: A period is a fault or a period is a yard sale?

Tony: No. The sign reads "He who thinks he is without fault has another fault, as in his fault is that he thinks he has no faults. Then a period. End of sentence. New sentence: Yard sale. As in, the church is having a yard sale.

Oh.

Well yes, I suppose that makes sense.

Maybe the yard sale is to raise money to buy some punctuation.

10/12/11 Joyride

ZB gets a "Jeep" walker for racing around in the kitchen. General mayhem ensues. Luckily, I caught it on video:

9/10/11 ZB Uses a Spoon

From the producers who brought you "ZB's First Cereal" comes the amazing new video, "ZB uses a spoon". Watch as ZB wages a war against oatmeal with a spoon that cannot be trusted and a heart made of gold. Critics give it 4 stars. "Amazing!" says Daddy. "Two thumbs up!" raves Mommy, "ZB's oatmeal performance is some of her best work yet!" This is the finest spoon work you will see all year! Opens everywhere today. This film has not yet been rated.

Now playing at a blog near you.

6/15/11 Baptism

ZB's baptism was a few weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to organizing the pictures. I figured that if I was going through them on my online photo album, I might as well share a few.

It was a really great service. Family showed up from as far north as Chicago and as far south as Savannah to witness it. ZB wore the christening gown that my great-grandmother made roughly 60 years ago...the same one that my dad was christened in, as well as all of my uncles and cousins. It's gotten soft and thin from age and numerous washings, but it was neat having that kind of family history.

To augment the family christening gown, (which in addition to being white and fairly unadorned, was a little big on ZB and therefore looked like she was wearing a pillowcase) my mom made a satin and lace over-robe, bonnet, and matching blanket. All together, she was just lovely. (Plus she really enjoyed raising her legs and watching the fabric billow up around her-endless baby entertainment there).

ZB hadn't yet made it through an entire church service without needing feeling the need to express herself vocally, so we were a little nervous about sitting in the very front where we wouldn't be able to slip out easily, but it turned out that our fears were for naught. She was perfect the entire time. Even when the priest poured water on her head. Even when he marked her with oil. Even when everyone crowded around to take pictures afterwards. She was a trooper, and she handled it with grace and dignity. (Well, except for the very very end when we had a minor diaper explosion, but a little bleach in the pre-wash and that gown will live to see another 60 years).

Seester and her husband Stubby were the godparents, and they did a great job. They didn't even drop her or anything.

After the service, we all headed over to Mom and Dad's house (our house is too small for so many people) and had a fabulous barbecue lunch that I'm still dreaming about. (Seriously, we had various flavored trifle for dessert, and the other night I had a dream that I was eating chocolate trifle by the handful. That stuff was sooooo good! It is also a main reason why I'm not back down to my pre-pregnancy weight either).

So a good day. I'm so glad that both the church family and the family-family were able to witness and celebrate with us. How lucky ZB and we as her parents are to have so many people who love her so much.