Ella's new Grill, and More On Janene's Gas Nozzle Jacking

Oddly enough, Ella's love of the photo op has done a 180. She was not thrilled to have her picture taken, nor was she thrilled with the outcome, so here's just a tiny peek. She really rocks the metal look in my opinion though.

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There seems to be some interest in hearing more about my sister Janene's gas nozzle jacking. Here's the rest of the story, continued from this post. It's one I can sit and listen to her tell all day long...

Upon discovering that she had a gas pump nozzle and its accompanying hose conspicuously trailing her rear end, she repeatedly uttered that mild expletive that rhymes with the word 'it'. Did I mention she said it repeatedly? While thus engaged in repeating said expletive, she considered her options............................. but not for very long, because she's an honest person like that - even in the face of such a mortifying and humiliating circumstance. Upon turning around to bravely meet her fate, she discovered she was the object of much finger pointing and laughter. And yet she continued on. Only a few moments later, upon returning to the scene of the crime, she discovered herself to be the target of even more fingers and laughter by those whom had witnessed her spectacular departure. Then, to her astonishment, from amongst the throngs of gleeful mocking faces, emerged three Good Samaritans (from south of the border) rushing to her aid.

"You go, you go", they said, as one of them removed the nozzle from its infamous resting place. "You go, you go, we tell them we did it. You go".

As they tried to persuade her in their broken English to let them take the fall, the one who had taken the nozzle was trying to hook it back up before the attendant came out. The hose was too banged up from pavement pounding however, and it didn't take. In the annuls of history, and even in the scriptures themselves, have you ever heard a greater tale of mercy and self-sacrifice? Okay, yeah. But have you ever heard a sweeter one. Okay, yes again. But would you have ever expected this story to take such a touching and heartwarming turn? I think not. I hope those three nice men can get some legal documents someday (oh my gosh, did I just imply that out loud?).

In conclusion, it was determined that the nozzle and hose were both covered by the station's insurance. The only fine to be paid was lots of embarrassment, which she took with great humor. That's why I love her so much :)

Sophie's New Grill and the Genetics of My Brain Disorder

We're hookin' up all the girls with new grillz, and yesterday Sophie went first. Ella will be next on Thursday (Eva is still in the consultation phase). I think Sophie made an excellent choice going with the neon green bands!

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It was both comforting and disturbing on Saturday when my sister called to tell me about how she had just driven away from a gas station with the pump nozzle still in her car. Down the street a little bit from the gas station, she checked her side view mirror before changing lanes, and there was the nozzle, still in place, with the hose dangling on the road behind it.

How does a person forget to put the nozzle back in place before driving away you ask? Well, she decided to go inside to get herself a Diet Coke while her gas was pumping, and then just hopped in the car and drove off when she came back out. Sounds about right to me, which is disturbing.

It reminded me of the time I accidentally left the car running in the parking lot at UNR, outside the speech therapy building. I was running late getting Sophie to speech therapy that day, so as soon as we arrived, I whipped right out of the driver's seat, opened the back door and helped Sophie put her shoes on and fixed her hair. Then, I rushed her into the building, signed-in, and looked around for her therapist. After the session was finally underway, I relaxed in the darkness of the observation area and watched Sophie in therapy. About fifteen minutes later, I decided I wanted to play around with my new i-pod, so I went out to the car to retrieve it. What a shock it was to discover that in my haste to get Sophie into the building, I had forgotten to turn off the car.

Janene and I are fascinatingly similar in our brain dysfunctions. We talk about it all the time, and constantly come up with self-improvement plans that, of course, we will start the following Monday :) And when our husbands are together and compare wife notes, the complaints are identical. It gets a little scary.

I've had some success over my struggles this week though. Last night for instance, I made it to bed at 11:30, and that was in the face of my lying brain telling me it would be a good thing to stay up again! Also, I have a new planner in which I have actually written something. I bought a thin one, as to not overwhelm myself. And Matt bought me a very thin Moleskin notebook to write lists in as well.

I've had those all too familiar failures however. It's often a case of the mind being willing but the brain being weak. I WILL NOT give up though... at least not until I am faced with the next tempting distraction, which could present itself at any moment :)

But for reals peeps, this is my goal for the week: 11 o'clock bedtime everyday!!!!!! My heart just skipped a beat as I said that out loud.

Scott MacIntyre Must Go

Hate is such a strong word, which is why I'm going to use it. I really hate Scott's singing... he must go!

Now on to more important matters.

What a shocker it was to see this lame-O plastic egg dipper in my dye kit this year. Easter will never be the same if they get rid of the classic copper dipper.

Which is why I bought a different kit when I had to make a Walmart run for vinegar as soon as we were ready to sit down and start dying. I could have sworn we had a bottle.

A 14 year old's finger nails

Julia saw this picture of Jamie and asked if it was of her. I told her no, it's Jamie, to which she replied, "hmmm, I still can't tell us apart."

Jamie, Allison (go Allison), Sophie

Eva (her favorite pose) and Ella

Remember when my kids were stranded at my sister's back in December when a storm hit and I couldn't get over the pass? Today my sister is returning the favor - the pass is closed :D

p.s. hopefully all of America was watching AI delayed on their DVRs, missed Adam Lambert when their recording stopped just as he was about to sing, and didn't vote for him. He must also go.

Cranberry Sauce Presentation

My sister Janene really loves how cranberry sauce looks just like the can - so do I. It's so classy!

Well, I had no idea the first installment of my day in pictures would be so riveting. Unfortunately, Part 2 won't be posted until Sunday evening or Monday. Sorry if you had hopes of finding out today how I passed my time between 1 pm and 5 pm last Thursday. I'm pretty sure you're all extremely disappointed ;-)

On Monday I will be starting my musical Advent Calendar, counting down my favorite Christmas songs - 25 in all. Sometimes my own brilliance amazes me.

Awesome Fireside Idea and Amazing Race Training

This song came on in the car tonight, and it reminded me that Matt thinks it's an awesome idea for Gladys Knight to sing this at a church fireside - I have to agree! I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, and with every fiber of my being, that I would have a totally super spiritual experience if I could be there on the front pew if she ever did.

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Any of you Amazing Race fans who think you're going to beat Ella and me to win the million dollars, check this out! We're already in training. Be ye therefore warned...

Ella on the right

Ella will be doing all the daredevil stuff remember, so I guess it's actually just her in training at the moment (with our neighbor Brittany), but nevertheless - be ye therefore still warned...

From the Ultimate Rush website:

Combine sky diving, bungee jumping and hang-gliding. We hoist you along with one or two of your friends to the top of our 180 foot skycoaster where you pull the ripcord. You will experience a free fall and then fly thru the air at over 65 mph. Nothing you ever do will be more exciting or create a bigger adrenalin rush.

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And thanks to Alyson at New England Living for helping me watermark my horse pics! Thanks :) And you should check out her lovely photos, many of which are of cemeteries. Dang I love a good cemetery :D

Back to School For Ella And A Slide Show

We have an 8th grader now *huge gasp*. Ella started school on Monday :( Above is the requisite first day of school picture. Eva and Sophie go back after Labor day :( :(

Contrary to the impression I gave of myself zombified in front of the television, obsessed and crazed watching Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt 23/7, and then spending the 24th hour blogging about it, I didn't actually ignore my children every moment of the two week long Olympic Games (although I did, and still do, ignore the laundry). Somehow I gathered the strength and manage to peel myself away from the action and go have some fun with them a few times. And while Michael Phelps was conquering the world in Beijing at The Water Cube, we had some swimming victories of our own. First, after being able to swim unassisted in deep water for 4 years now, Eva can finally swim and jump in without plugging her nose! And second, Sophie learned to swim unassisted, floaty free, in the deep end!!!!! She learned how to dive before she could do that. Allow me to congratulate myself for this milestone in motherhood - congratulations!

Here's a bigmegahugeginormous slide show of some water fun we had the second half of August. Probably only my mother and sister will care to make it through the entire thing though. Why so many pictures? Because I can :)

Future Olympians In Training

My niece Jamie is an excellent diving coach, and she's only five! I think she has a future in coaching, and Sophie may someday become a champion diver under her tutelage. This is Diving 101 - With Jamie and Sophie

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Here's a look back at the greatest diver ever, Greg Louganis. And the 1984 Summer Olympics were my favorite.

Happy Birthday To My BFF Janene

My bff also happens to be my sister :) Why do I love her so much? Because we just laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh!!! This is Janene last week (below) telling me about an episode of Friends. She loves that show! She could hardly finish explaining a scene in which one of the guys was wearing some leather pants while out on a date, and got too hot in them, so he went into the bathroom and peeled them off to cool down. Then he couldn't get them back on because he was all sweaty. So he called one of the other friends for help, and the other friend told him to put some powder on his legs. Well the powder made a paste with his sweat, and at that point, my sister couldn't breath :D We have fun no matter what we're doing!

Happy Birthday!!! Love ya :)

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How wonderful is it that our guys SMASHED the French in the men's 4 x 100 freestyle relay!!!!! Jason Lezak taking over the lead literally on the last stroke, was a thing of beauty!

You'd think the French would know by now not to be ge'in all up in our grillz wid they trash talk :)

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Pt. 2 - The Pics

Part 3 (that's right, I'm not quite finished yet) will be my reasons why the Boardwalk is preferable to Disneyland, Six Flags Marine World, Great America, and all other über-large and über-themed out amusement parks. But until then, here are the pics.

Hangin' With The Berkeley Tree Sitters

On Friday we went to Berkeley to pick up KC Ben (our cousin from Kansas City), who was at Berkeley for a two week summer film camp, so while we were there, we took the opportunity to see the spectical and insanity that is the Oak Grove tree 'sit in'. Ah, Berkeley! There are no words really. Well I guess there are a few, but something like the tree sitters really has to be experienced first hand to appreciate. But here's a small attempt anyway, to convey a little bit of the atmosphere at the Memorial Oak Grove, just west of Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley, where some tree sitters have been tree sitting for over 600 days to spare The Oak Grove from becoming pavement, or a practice stadium - or something like that. We found out that much more is at stake than just these trees though! Zachary Running Wolf explained to us (it's in my video), that this is about UC Berkeley being a nuclear super power and trying to rule the entire world! So there - take that! ;-)

Zachary Running Wolf

This was like a flash back (and appropriate phrase to use when talking about Berkeley) of the four years we spent living in Humboldt County, California - which I loved, btw :) Oh how I miss constantly hearing about the virtues of hemp and how it can save the world, seeing middle class white kids turned hippie trying their hardest to wear their hair in dreadlocks, and seeing "Save The Headwaters Forest' spray painted everywhere ;-) Well of course I'm being a bit silly, but I do miss those first two things in a strange way. And I especially miss everything being green (I mean the landscape), and the friends we had there.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Wilipedia link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_University_of_California%2C_Berkeley_Oak_Grove_Protest

Tail end of our trip

We picked up our cousin Ben in Berkeley on Friday, and then had some fun in Santa Cruz, and up the coast. These pics are just from yesterday and today though. The slide show starts out at a beach in Davenport, then at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, and then Emerald Bay and Eagle Falls at Lake Tahoe.

More to follow soon...blogging is so much more fun than unpacking :)

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Randomness Vol. 1

How cute is this? A boy and his bug. Tuesday evening out at the Hamricks in Mogul, RJ (my nephew) brought in a wounded dragonfly and placed it on the kitchen counter for all of us to enjoy while we made dinner.

The dragonfly wasn't quite dead yet, and was still moving its wings ever so slightly. Ella was appalled at its suffering and wanted it smashed with a rock to put it out of its misery. I don't think that happened - no one volunteered for bug smashing duty. The thing was as practically the size of a small bird, but it did eventually disappear from the kitchen, and is probably blowin' in the wind somewhere.

I really like dragonfly art, btw. Stuff like dragonfly garden ornaments, candle holders or jewelry with dragonflies are wonderful, but they're really horrible up close, and you would certainly never want one near your face - unless it was in earring or neclace form.

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This male roosting pheasant (my father in-law Marv informed as to what it is) has been hanging out in the wetlands off of Double R Blvd, just north of Double Diamond Blvd. Ella and I first saw it about three weeks ago. We both couldn't believe our eyes, so I flipped a u-ey (how is that spelled?) and drove past it again. It was a strange sight! Since then, Matt and the girls have seen it on several occasions in the same general area, and yesterday I was finally able to get this picture. Isn't he beautiful? Marv says he used to see these in this area while out surveying, before there were any houses out here. He said there was a hunting club somewhere near the gun club that used to release them for hunting. Hmmmm, maybe it survived some lousy hunters who couldn't shoot straight.

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I was able to revive my latest hydrangea from dehydration, after having taken very good care of it for a couple weeks. It had a near death experience Tuesday morning, but made a comeback that took an hour! My last one died when we went to Idaho, and this one will be dead by Sunday morning- we're going out of town tomorrow - RIP beautiful blue hydrangea

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This is our very impromptu family get together family portrait. It happened that we wanted a picture of all of us (right when I stepped out of the water of course), and when we were looking around for someone on the beach to take it, Robert (in the red shirt next to me in the back) spotted a professional photographer getting ready to shoot the sunset. So he took Janene's card out of her camera, quick thinker that he is, and took it over to the photographer and asked him if he would put Janene's card in his camera and take our picture - and he did :) What a nice man!!! That's how we get stuff done in our family, lol! Never with very much forethought, but it always turns out alright. It was all crazy because we were trying to hurry for him though, and we were running around to get in place so we wouldn't waste too much of his time. Sophie had to be dragged over in the boat because she was too cold from swimming to move or do anything, but it turned out pretty cute I think, for throwing it together in about 60 seconds :)

Sand Harbor - another video with our Kansas kin :)

In this video, Ben and Ella jump the 'runway rock'. I don't know what that rock is actually called, or if it even has a name (someone should name and map out all the jumping rocks at Sand Harbor), but it's the one that has to be run down before reaching the point at which you can jump. You can't tell from this angle, but it's only about 3 feet wide at the most all the way down, so not slipping or tripping is critical!!! Ella has wanted to do this for a long time, and it's always made me nervous, but she finally did it on Friday, and so did Ben! There were no injuries sustained, yay :)

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Emerald Bay and Eagle Falls outing

Here's a little video montage of our outing last week with our relatives from Kansas. I already posted a couple pics from this last week. They'll be at my sister Janene's house today, after having been to San Francisco, Berkeley, Napa Valley and Chico - all after leaving Lake Tahoe on Sunday. They can watch this when they finally get home and have recovered :)

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We uncovered a hoax at the family reunion

We could have just looked at some youtube videos to figure this out, but we didn't have any wireless service up at the lake. And besides, it was more fun doing it ourselves.

Here's the video Heather saw (I think this must be the one) that started it all

And here's us being gullible enough to think it might actually be true

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Slideshow

Our little family soiree was a huge success. More details to follow soon. But for now, here's a slideshow

They're not in Kansas anymore...

...they're in Reno (right now Lake Tahoe actually) - our visitors that is. Last night, my Aunt Eileen's daughter Gretchen(see earlier post about my Aunt Eileen) and Gretchen's husband Robert and son Ben flew in from Kansas for a visit :) We had a very fun day, despite the smoke stifling us here again in Reno. Wednesday night, after a relatively clear day, it rolled in again in the evening like dense fog spreading itself over a coastal town :( But, they had a great attitude about it, and we decided to just pretend it wasn't happening. It was hard not to be disappointed all day though, that most every beautiful view was filtered through smoke - sometimes even completely blocked. Oh well, what cha gonna do?

After we had visited for a while (with my mom, Janene, Josie, Jamie and Julia here too), and caught up with each others lives and then some, we went to the lake and went to the beach at the end of Ski Run in South Lake Tahoe first. You can walk all the way out to the buoys and never have your head below water. Ben really loved how clear the water was, and he and Ella and I went quite a ways out.

Then we headed over to Emerald Bay. They were all overwhelmed by the beauty of the drive and the views, even though we couldn't quite see anything very clearly. Robert especially loved the part of the drive right before you get to Emerald Bay, and on either side of the two lane road is water. Emerald Bay on one side, and Fallen Leaf Lake on the other. The road is elevated enough that if you were to sneeze violently, or be too distracted by the beauty, you could accidentally drive right over the edge and kill your entire family. There are no guard rails. That's my favorite part of the drive too, lol. I think I'll have to video tape that sometime - while someone else is driving of course.

Then it was getting dark, and we headed back to where they are staying, and stopped at Big Daddy's Burgers for dinner and ate outside in the smoke :)

Sophie, Ella, Eva and Ben overlooking Emerald Bay

Eva, Sophie and Robert

Eagle Falls at Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe

Smokey Sunset at Emerald Bay

This picture doesn't at all do justice to the color of the sun - it was red

Beautiful tree roots at Eagle Falls

A new way of rubbernecking

And she was able to hold her head up without assistance only a few minutes later

Hi Dad

Ella gets lost at the zoo

Fortunately she had her cell phone :D I could see her, but she couldn't see me

Three sheepish sheep await their fate

By far, my favorite exhibit at the Tautphaus Zoo

Happy Father's Day!!!

Today I'm in Idaho Falls visiting my dad for Father's Day. Matt is at home alone :( But he's a good sport to spend it alone so that I could come and see my father. Happy Father's day Matt and Tom (and Richard my step-father, and Marv my father in-law, have to keep everyone happy)!!!!!!! We started out at Smitty's Pancake House this morning, then swimming, and now he's back at his place for a nap. He said he stayed up all night drinking coffee because he was so excited to see us. How sweet! We're all having a little downtime, and Ella is napping too. We're picking him up again at 5 pm for dinner. Ciao for now

My dad

What a teenager!

Yesterday was a looooooong drive

Wow! He likes his butter!

He finished!!! Why didn't I inherit his metabolism? NOT FAIR!!! Some things are just wrong :D

Outside Smitty's Pancake & Steak House