Georgia’s B-day was GREAT!

We went to the Newport Aquarium and we took Uncle Benny.

Newport Aquarium boosts to have the only Shark Ray in captivity.

That was a strange looking animal, a lot bigger than I thought.

Georgia got a little freaked out when we went inside those tunnel tanks with fish swimming overhead, especially when the sharks were patrolling around.

I have to admit, it was a little scary.

Fish are hard to take pictures of.  They seemed mildly interested in us, some animals were more curious than others.

Like the little fish, very interested, Octopus, not so much. That reminds me…. There was a little boy that wanted the octopus to spew his ink, and of course the animal was in no way interested in this type of display. The Dad, said to the kid, “Well, I guess he is not scared enough to spit his ink”, so the boy gets right next to the glass, pretty much in the creatures eye and screams “AAAAGGHHH!”   The Dad, not realizing he invited this activity, laughs and redirects his son. Meanwhile the poor octopus, starts heading for the back of the tank, slithering away from those rotten kids.  I guess it takes a lot to scare an octopus out of his ink.

Anyway, we had a ball.

We had a picnic lunch in the parking lot then headed home.

I baked a cake and we celebrated.

Fun stuff.

Dwayne had never seen a horseshoe crab before, so commonplace back home, it took me by surprise.

Of course there's NEMO!!

Dylan looking at the aligators 

that is a sleeping pile of otters

Then at home....

The guitar came from Uncle Benny, that should be no surprise! It also makes music whne it is not around the neck, this is Georgia getting down in her new knee socks.

I sent these with her to school today, her teacher Mr. Tyron had a birthday the same day as Georgia.

Here are the pictures that I promised a while ago.

I will post about Thanksgiving tomorrow.

J

Halloween:

Georgia decides to cut her hair:

This is a nice before shot:

I came out of the bathroom to find this:

This is what it looked like after:

So we ended up here:

It isn't she cute?

General around the house shots:

  Hey there. I have not been writing because I feel I must include pics.

I decided just now that I should not let that stop me from writing.

Our computer is dead, dead, dead. And let me tell you how much that bites.

As if we have enough money to spread around for Christmas, let alone buy a new computer.

I looked into fixing the one we have, sony wants 300 bucks to replace the hard drive, which is toast and the battery no longer holds a charge.

But who cares right?

I made a bunch of hard candy. It's cheaper than cookies!!

And it was a ton of fun.

I also made marshmallows from scratch. Those were sooo easy!

I thought I could coat them in chocolate, make some sort of mallow pie.

Guess what happens when you put hot chocolate on a marshmallow?

Yeah, it melts, duh.

Boy did I have a huge mess on my hands, and Georgia at my feet, "I wanna taste it mommy"

It was big fun.

Mom just got her long awaited hip replacement done on Friday. It went beautifully. She is hoping to be out of the hospital today, you can't sleep in those places!!

My bother has been staying with us, he is recovering, going to meetings and staying clean. Woo-hoo! His father, my step dad, is violently ill, he has been hospitalized since Halloween. They keep adding dysfunctions to the list, it started with liver failure, and now it is sounding like congestive heart. ugh.

Georgia definitely has her own mind. She likes pushing the limits and taking chances, someday these will be good attributes, but at 3 yrs old....not so much!

Saturday is her b-day. I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, you would figure she would say, chocolate or vanilla or sponge-bob. No, she says, cherry.

Oh Ok. Cherry it is.

Dylan is a brute. He is the same weight as Georgia and almost as tall and only 6 months old. Their feet are only one inch in difference.

He is so very happy and curious. He is reaching for things and eating from a spoon. I whip up his dinner in the mini-food chopper and he eats like a champ.

They are a lot of fun.

Funniest Quote from Georgia this week:

“Daddy, Daddy…Mommys butt is smiling at you.”

Crazy times.

I have been under the rug, I mean under the gun.  I have been snapping plenty of pics of the kids but just busier than a bus station.

I have been jet setting for the zon, ignoring my own immediate children in favor of other needy pseudo children of the zon. I’ve been training folks in PA, NV and soon the big TX. I did get to see my extended kin in PA while I was there.  I live in the south now, I can use the word, Kin. Yeah so my Kin and I were talking one day….Are you Kin to him?  Is that your Kin?  Ha. Such a funny word.

So today, I am driving to work and I think to myself, if only I could stay home today and just simply rake the leaves.

I would just love to rake all of those leaves out into the street and then sit on my front step, drink a cup o’ Joe and watch the cars drive by. Watch those cars drive by and kick those leaves right up into the crisp fall air, watch them fall again to the street and just drink that coffee, maybe read the paper. Maybe dig a hole in the ground for those “Never-die” plants, my neighbor gave me *months* ago, they are sitting leave covered in the flowerbed but still in a flower pot. They ache for the ground to spread those roots.

But then as I curve around the bend in the road, it occurs to me, if I were staying home from work today, or better yet, did not have a job to go to, then raking those damn leaves would  *be* my job and I would loath them as I loath going to the zon this morning.

So I take a big gulp of my coffee, (Thx for the brew Brother!), and think at least I have a job and my job is not bad at all.

I have been thinking about ways to, so called, “give back to the community”, though I haven’t really taken much from the community so I don’t really owe anybody anything, I think I just want something else to do. I think I would really enjoy teaching a bunch of folks how to quilt or how to make cookies for the holiday, the pretty brightly colored ones that Mama used to make. I guess what I am saying is that creative spark is burning my hide and I honestly don’t have much time for it.

I don’t really have time, I dream big, but I have no time, it is funny how I kid myself into thinking that I live in a world of 40 hour days and 8 day weeks. There is already a hairball of activities occurring right in my immediate space, all around me, I am extremely busy with work, family and my brother. And I am ashamed to say, but the last couple of weeks that has been the order of things. Work followed by family followed by my brother. Ugh. Makes my inner artist cringe. I had long chats with my old buddy Bruce, he is always inspiring, even when he is cursing the world around him. I saw his Tattoo Shop, totally Bruce style, sleek and professional and cool. Did I say that Bruce is the coolest guy that I know and really, everyone should have to pay to have the privilege to hang out with him, just plop a meter on his chest. (Inside joke, sorry.) 

I really want to rake those leaves. I really want to rake all of the leaves on the whole street into a big ol’pile and let all of the neighborhood kids come by and jump in and then sit and laugh when the leaf sucking truck comes by to suck the leaves and can’t get around the massive pile that I raked. That would be some good community service!

Ha.

Check out my pics.

 The Chub

Joanne & the Kids

Aunt Sharan & Uncle Chuck

My Pop & Me

PA Mountains

My Gramma

Mama & Jimmit, Linz in tha background

The Girls, Mama bought these ahts for us and we paraded around our little town like proper young ladies. We were so cute.

My Chesapeake Bay

The Young Bunch

Nan-nan & Pop-pop

Mama & Nan

My Little hometown

Bruce & I, in his shop

His shop

Big Boy driving a big car

Finally mama's home!!

Fall Harvest!  Beets, Carrots, tomatoes, green peppers & sunflower seeds

These puppies were so good!! I will grown these next year!!

Ok, so it has been a while. A lot of stuff going on.

Death in the Family, travel for family and work, family coming for visits and soon my brother is relocating to our area, will be staying with us for a little while. Whew. I guess it wasn’t that hard to just drop in.

I’d love to post a bunch of pics, however, I no longer have what is it called, Prime membership. Whatever. I thought I had paid up for a couple of years, but I guess not.

Plus I broke my Digital camera on the trip to TX from Iowa, I bet you really wanted to see those pics?

He he. I got a lot of pictures of the family and couple of the cows. I found one cow that even looked like my buddy Bruce. It was pretty funny. You’ll have to guess how funny tho’ cuz I can’t show ya.

Oh, boy. This is no good.

How much is the premium membership again, ugh.

Thanks to FKIProfessor for the plug.

I totally dug that Bible story!  You see,  he did this pick a number game, and the number corresponded to a Bible Story, then he would go through and tell you some stuff about the number that you chose. I chose the number 27.

It was the Challenge Chapter – Genesis 27 post from Sept 21^st.

Check it out.

Another to watch is my friend SuSu  in Alaska, she has posted some great Fall Pics from her corner of the woods. I guess mosquitoes are every where, blasted things!!!

EDIT:
I couldn't take it. I paid the price for the pictures sake. Now I have to buy a new camera.

Sorry for the font changes, I am on the search for a new one.

I think this is nice, comments?

Dwayne watched the kids and I had a night out Saturday!!

I went to see Frank Black, good ol’ Black Francis. It was good fun. It was an acoustic solo performance in a small joint, real personal. He played Wave of Mutilation, of course and a couple of other favs. It was nice to see his chubby cheeky’s.

Good Fun.

Well, it is harvest season at the Bell household.

Take a look at some of our bounty.

I get the biggest kick out of the potatoes, however, the lettuce was the best provider, seemed like we always had some lettuce for dinner time. I am going to plant another round this weekend. It may be too late, we have pretty mild winters here, maybe we will get some baby leaves. The peppers have been good producers, pretty steady. I think we have harvested about 10 so far and there are more on the way. The three red pepper plants haven’t produced anything yet, but they are about to explode with fruit.  Can’t wait to taste them.

Did you know that the veggie you grow yourself taste different? Somehow I missed that as a kid.

The radishes did NOTHING. We were all pretty disappointed.

The beets are getting ready to be ready.

The okra has been slow and steady. Two here and one there, nothing worth doing anything with. I thought two plants would over do our family, lesson learned. The broccoli has had it’s day, I trimmed the remaining heads and I am hoping to squeeze another few flowers before I evict them along with the Sunflowers when they are ready for harvesting next week or so. Carrots all but died, a few made it. Darn clay, it dries and cracks killing all sorts of roots. Two of the three cucumber plants died and both squash plants died. I don’t feel a loss over the squash, it wasn’t the squash I thought I was going to grow. I have been pulling up tiny onions here and there, they pretty much died too. The little buggers that we do harvest aren’t much bigger than when I put them in, and boy, are they strong flavored. Whew! Dwayne cut up a few reds today before I got home with the kids and I actually teared up just being in the kitchen with’em. I am going to get some Egyptian Walking Onions from my neighbor down the street. She has onions all year long, even in the winter, can you believe it??

Fun stuff.

I want more potatoes next year, had four plants this year, want at least 10 next year. There is something so magical about pulling up a bunch of tubers from the dirt, Georgia had big fun gathering them up while I dug and Dwayne helped keep her steady. It was good family fun. Dylan managed to get a couple of mosquito bites on his big ol’head while we worked.

Little spud didn't grow fast enough...

Dirty Taters

Clean Taters

Funny Tater

I‘ve learned some stuff, can’t wait till next year. Woo hoo!

 I got Dylan to laugh for the first time yesterday, it was really cute, little belly roll laugh. Today he was getting a big kick out of me tickling Georgia while he was on my lap, it made him laugh again.

I started him on cereal, he is hungry boy! The pediatrician is going to be disappointed, but he said I would need to start Dylan on foods sooner than I did Georgia.

He said that Dylan is going to be a chubby little man for a while, and to not be surprised.

Sounds like he is going to be like his Uncles Doug & Ben, short and chubby as kids and tall and brawn as adults.

Maybe he will play football? Maybe Rugby…yeah Rugby.

Here we are and it is August.

I don’t feel like chatting. I am sleep deprived, stressed and homesick.

I will recover, most likely with some sleep and a little R&R.

My best friend will be in town this Sunday, we are going camping and will have great talks about the weather. I will return refreshed to say the least.

I'm  sure everyone would like to see some pics of the kids.

Dylan weighed in at 14.5 lbs & 24 inches long at his two month check up. That is a 6 lb gain since birth!

He is 90% for heigth, 97% for weight.

Doc says to prepare for a chubby bubby. Go figure.

Check this out!! I have never seen corn do this before:

We didn’t do much this weekend, just lounged around. I did a little gardening and washed the windows inside & out. Dwayne helped me clean the fish tank. We took turns sleeping in. It was nice to downshift.

I got some good face shots of “the chub”

the Hysterical laugh

Flirting with his Mama

the profile

sticking out his tounge

in the middle of saying, "Ohhhhh..."

Directing traffic

Back to work.

It is going to be an interesting run, this new position. Roll, punch, roll, punch, as it goes @ the zon. Nothing I can’t handle that’s for sure. I had a nice time in Seattle. I saw Brother Doug & Family. We saw a movie with the girls. Nacho Libre! It was cute. Then we went to the Cheesecake factory. The girls are growing up so fast. Emilee asked questions about Georgia, learning that they are much alike. I wish they could play together, Georgia would dig it so much.  I saw my good ol’buddy Darlene. We had some fun shopping and dining out. We had big plans for a road trip in her new Mini Copper, but she didn’t have it from the dealer yet. I’m so jealous. I also had a good time hanging out with a old friend from the warehouse I worked at in Delaware. She was training me for my new job. We discovered we had a lot of old friends in common. It was really neat to trade stories over dinner. I met dasha for lunch. It was a real treat to put a smile to a blog.

The family & I caravanned downtown for the 4^th of July Parade. It was real nice. I got some pics to share.

I also took some shots of our garden. Dwayne did great while I was in Seattle, it still thrives.

It is 8 feet from the grass to the fence and then 18 feet from the side to side.

We have red & yellow onions, cucumbers, okra, beets, carrots, yellow squash, sunflowers, lettuce, radish, plum tomatoes, yellow potatoes.

This is the secondary container garden, it has strawberries , mint , chili peppers & sunflowers.

Then there is the herb garden, very established in its second year now.

It has elephant garlic, regular garlic, oregano, basil, sage - both green & purple, lavender, bay, rosemary, chives, cilantro/coriander, parsley, nasturtium (edible flowers) and daisy - they just popped up!

all just five steps from my kitchen door....ah... the life!

Yesterday on the way home from school, Georgia says:

“Dude! Slow down my car!”

2 years old and already a backseat driver!