Marketing + Imagination

Ever since we bought some Panda peanut butter crispy rice bars for Wrigley, she has been pretty interested in Pandas. When she asked how long they sleep, we headed to Google and found out that,

The pandas are usually asleep by 6 pm and remain so until about 10 pm. Then they wake for a midnight snack and are usually asleep again by 1:30 am until about sunrise. They tend to take multiple naps during the day as well.

Ed has decided that he'll be a panda in a next life.

Today, we headed down Highway 99 to Elk Rock Island (don't particularly recommend it, by the way). In the car Wrigley renamed it Panda Island and proceeded to tell us all the things we would find there. She named things like bamboo (of course!), logs for balancing on, a hill and some rocks. We found all of these things and the largest dandelion seeds you've ever seen!






This picture shows off Wrigley's recent haircut, and if I didn't tell you that this is about to be Wrig's stop-taking-pictures-of-me growl, you might think she was laughing!

Scenes from a weekend

Papa Bird has finally joined in the work. We noticed the new activity, first thing this morning and both Mama Bird and Papa Bird have been fussing with their chicks all day long. I want to know what happened to the eggshells, and Ed is surprised that they are so ugly!


Happy Father's Day hike


A day of fabulous weather ended with an equally fabulous rainbow, sunset and thunderstorm. The storm moved in from the south as the sun set, but the clouds never covered the western horizon, so the rainbow lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. After the rainbow faded, the sky remained a solid orange color for while. Most remarkable was that the color of the cloud cover changed significantly from one side of the rainbow to the other. You can sort of see that in this picture, but as is usually the case with Nature, the picture doesn't do it justice.


Kid's Night is always interesting. We are glad to be the sort of parents to include a mud pit in the planning of the backyard, but when the kids started washing their hair with it, we started thinking about how to put a Sorry It's Closed sign on the mud pit for large groups of kids.


Okay, this is from last weekend. We had plenty of shelter under a big pine tree for this downpour which came out of nowhere. We had been sunning ourselves on that bench not 5 minutes before. It was a much better view than we usually get from our living room window.


These ducks are unfazed.

Well, duh ...

We were off to an end of the year barbecue this evening and we were prepping Wrig to spend an evening with a bunch of adults she doesn't know. We had a brief conversation that sounded something like this:

D: You know how Daddy teaches kids how to act and to write? Two of the people there tonight teach kids how to draw!
W: (you will need to imagine here the sound of disbelief, the sound of a three year old expressing wordlessly that her daddy is the thickest person on the planet) Everybody knows how to draw!

Who am I to argue?

Butterflies

 



 

Flowers for Mommy

More Eggs

Mama bird laid some more eggs and now needs a book. She looks pretty bored sitting on them all the time. Though, she is quite watchful...as is Marble who loves to watch her.


When I was a kid visiting my grandmother often meant doing crumbled eggshell pictures. We did them soon after Easter and we are preparing to them again tomorrow. We'll grind these up (half the fun) and glue them to paper.

We have a new guest on our porch: Mama Bird. She began working on a nest last Wednesday and we had an egg by Friday. I'm worried that she's not the best mother. It seems like she's only on her nest abuot 30% of the time. From what I've read, robins lay 3-4 eggs, but she only has one. Every around the house (Marble included) is all atwitter. Ed and Wrigley check to see if she is in her nest about a dozen times a day. We're expecting a baby bird in about 10 days.

According to Wrigley, "What a pretty nest!" When I wondered aloud, "How do they do that?" Wrigley responded, "I bet they start with the floor."

One if by Land ...

"Tomorrow night, I want you to tell me a story where one boat crashes into another boat ... and they're rescued by a ... SWIMMING ambulance!"

Dateline: Project Table

May 31, 2005. Portland, Ore. A mass grave has been discovered on the Project Table, just outside the Doll House. The bodies of three Doll Women were buried side by side while, nearby, in a separate unmarked grave, three generations of Doll Men were found. Reasons for the gender segregation remain unclear. Local authorities have no clues as to motive for this heinous crime, though prominent researchers have found a statistically significant connection between violent ambulance related bedtime stories and Doll homicide. The leading suspects in the case are the four frogs found sleeping in the victims' bed.

Not Our Proudest Moment

During dinner tonight, I asked the seemingly innocuous question, "Do we have any salsa?" Christie replied, "Sure."

So off I go to the fridge to grab the salsa. It is not in its normal salsa spot. It is also, apparently, not in an abnormal salsa spot. I see no salsa. I even move things to see if the salsa might be hiding behind something. No luck. "Are you sure we have salsa?"

Chris comes stomping over to the fridge, each footstep declaring my. husband. is. such. an. iiiidiot. No salsa here. No salsa there. No salsa anywhere. She moves the very same things I had moved before. "Huh," she says. "I was sure we had salsa."

Wrigley pipes up from the table. "I'll help." She skips over, grabs the salsa (which was hiding in plain sight, literally right before our eyes), hands it to me, and skips right on back to the table.