What Brenna Dreams About



Rollin' in her 6-4.




Mommy growing a goatee like Daddy.

Growing a goatee like Daddy, herself.

Sittin' on the corner with the Stooges.

No wait, that's my dream.

Struggle

Another two weeks have breezed by and nary a blog post from me. My apologies, it's been a tad busy here lately. We're about to head off for a visit with my family, but before we do, I thought I'd post the few pictures I've taken on my phone and/or camera in the last couple.

Catching Brenna jumping into the pool at swim lessons with my slow camera phone continues to be an exercise in futility. This is the closest I've gotten to catching her over the water.




And since that's the only new Brenna picture I have in my possession (I hear Emily has some of a recent school outing on her camera, but I haven't seen them yet), here are a few pictures of our new fish we inherited from a friend of our brother in law. In the first picture below, this fish (apparently called a jewel cichlid) had laid eggs all over the side of this rock, but alas, they were gone/consumed by morning.

If time permits, I'll be posting some pictures of our roses on the gardening blog. With the weather warming up, they're doing very well right now.

Phoning It In

Continuing on with the theme from my last blog, here are a few more pictures taken off of my phone in recent days/weeks/eons.

A few weeks ago Brenna got to jump on Auth Beth and Uncle John's trampoline, with Rachel. My phone camera is so delayed in taking pictures from the time you snap, that Brenna had time to go up, back down and back up again before the picture actually took. Once I figured that out, I was able to get some decent action shots, including the two directly below.

We recently inherited a rather large fishtank from a friend of John's. John was nice enough to spend the better part of last weekend setting this thing up and getting the fish that came with it situated. The tank is about six or so feet long, nearly three feet wide, and holds 120 or so gallons. There are nine African cichlids in there right now (we had ten originally, but one decided to take a trip down the porcelin slide instead).

Here is the tank, and the picture below is where the fish were hanging out, waiting to move back into their home.

Backs To The Wall

My blogging prowess will be slightly impaired today as I'm listening to Saxon whilst typing this. Don't know who they are? Good, that's how I like it. I'm a stallion of the highway.

I'm back for my now weekly blog update, and have recently uploaded some photos here from my phone that illustrate what the small child has been up to recently. Enjoy, if you dare.

A few weekends back we went into Phoenix with Aunt Beth, Uncle John, and Rachel, to a cool fish store. We'll be dragging a donated tank into our house this Saturday, so pray for my underwhelming six inch pythons and sprained/strained/boo-boo'd wrist as I try to assist in the effort.

Here is a shot of Brenna making sure this bizarre looking fish doesn't jump out of the tank after her. Be afraid, be very afraid.







This past Friday whilst Emily's friends were prancing around the house in their pajamas for a Mary Kay party, I took the small child to the local mall to blow off some steam, where she:

- Rode a rabid polar bear (notice she's whipping him/her with some make-believe reigns). I think that's Sasquatch running by in the background




- Went spelunking in an ice cave




- Drove a rally car through the Swiss Alps




Finally, I'd be remiss in not mentioning Brenna's recent school celebration of Dr. Seuss's 1000th (or whatever it was) birthday. Like her recent zoo visit, this event was star-studded. I was unable to attend due to a prior engagement of dwarf basting in the Andes, but Emily caught this shot of Brenna posing with Kim Karhootchie and the ever-present Richard Nixon. I always miss out on the good stuff.

Still fit to boogie, still fit to rock 'n' roll.

Brenna's Clothes

Life needs to slow down a little. I say this every week, but here I am on the other end of having not posted in forever, and it seems like I was just on here a few days ago.

I barely have time before the missus and small child get home to do little more today than upload some pictures of some clothes that Emily bought with a gift from the Grandparents Homans. Then it's off to emptying a dishwasher, reloading it, and coming up with a meal in the next 45 minutes.

Until I can come up with something creative again like my Oscars/zoo blog...

Call In The High Command

Last week I promised some pictures of the small child at the zoo from her school field trip, and I'm finally back to deliver.

One of the areas that she really enjoyed was the petting zoo, where she hung around on this calf. I think it was a handy place to hang out and not have to put her legs to work. I had no complaints, less chasing for me.

In the same area, they had a mock cow that she was able to "milk". This was a popular favorite with all of the school kids.

Over in the sun bear exhibit, cousin Rachel decided to drop by and check out the macaws with Bren. Don't worry, she snuck back to class before anyone missed her. Shhh, keep it on the down low. Shouldn't be a problem since no one reads these blogs. Pow! Self-inflicted diss!

What a star-studded day it turned out to be at the zoo. Angelina Jolie, fresh off her Oscars appearance, went back in time to ride the tractor in the petting zoo with our small child. Brenna, not knowing who Angelina is, threw a fit when the Tomb Raider (I'm dating myself here, sorry) star refused to take turns.

Back over in the sun bear area, Brenna posed for a picture at the faux ticket booth with none other than Sean "P-Diddy" "Puffy" "Afro Puffs" "Cocoa Puffs" Combs.

I can never pronounce this guys name, but even that guy from Borat showed up in the same area to pose on this giant stone toad. I hear he's in a new movie about middle eastern dictators. Who knew.

I thoroughly enjoyed updating you on Brenna's zoo adventures, hopefully I can come up with something else to post in the near future.

Zoo!

Wow, nine days already since I last posted anything. That's pretty sad. I had aspirations of posting at least every other day, and here we are most of the way through February and I've maybe posted five or six this month. It's almost like I have a five year old and household chores to take care of daily, in addition to working occasionally.

This may be the first time in the history of blogdom that I have a leg up on the wife on pictures. This past Saturday I took the small child to the Ren Festival, and was looking to blog about that first, but saw the wife taking those shots off of my camera a few days ago, so I can assume that the world of Crackbook is well aware of our exploits on that fateful day.

But lo, unbeknownst to her (at least I think), I uploaded my Brenna and Daddy zoo pictures to my netbook, free from the clutches of Crackbook. What I'm referring to here was a school field trip last Thursday that I was volunteered to go along as a supervising adult. I had Brenna and one other girl for the day, and after I obtain permission from the wife to do so, in my next blog I'll post some pictures of Brenna and this friend (who were connected at the hip) and what they did and saw at the aforementioned zoo.

In the meantime, here are some non-Brenna related pictures of the animals we saw. The two little girls refused to walk very far on their own, so we stayed in one particular area of the zoo, but I managed to take a few shots (and yes, I kept an eye on them, as well).

Since the weather is nice, and we were there first thing in the morning, the animals were all very active, which was cool.

The first one we saw was the elephants having breakfast.



The desert tortoise was at the front of his exhibit, and moving around, which was also pretty neat.



The iguana was sunning himself when we passed by his abode.

In the sun bear exhibit, we got an upclose look at this nasty looking fellow. I think he's a piranha.

Here's a lady feeding some cranes. These are my favorite birds at the zoo, sorry they're so far off you can't really see what they look like.

In the same water exhibit were some flamingoes.

We managed to catch one of the sun bears up close and personal, as well. That was a special treat that both girls really enjoyed.

Another treat was getting to watch the bald eagles while the two girls played some bear eating human game in a tunnel that was nearby.

We also walked through monkey village. Brenna took a stab at taking a picture of one of these fast moving monkeys, and caught the ass end of one here. Nicely focused, though.



Here's another shot of the same monkey, hanging out nearby.

And I would be remiss in not posting this shot of the orangutans playing in their exhibit. This was our final stop before I had to drag the two children back to the front gate.

Take Two

I was nearly finished with this blog yesterday when our home laptop decided to delete everything I had typed to that point. To make matters worse, for some reason the blog site wasn't auto saving my post as I was going along, so I was left with nothing to show for my time. In my disgust, I placed the laptop in the trash can for the remainder of the afternoon so it could think about what it had done.

I will do my best to recreate what I had commented on yesterday. As I recall, I made some witty comments about having not blogged in a week, due to spending the weekend with Brenna while Emily was at the festival, but not being sure where the other four or five days had gone.

I then redirected you, the two or three blog followers, to the these pictures of Emily giving me a mohawk, and made some additional witty comments about her enjoyment in doing creative hair sculpting whilst shaving my luscious locks down to near baldness that I am now. I also commented on the photo I had posted last time of my mutton chops, when I was testing out the Civil War general look whilst shaving down my scraggly beard. I finally asked you, the two or three devoted followers, to comment on your preference, Civil War mutton chops, or White Bread Mr. T mohawk. As I'm not travelling for work again until June, I may get bored enough to rock of the two looks until that time.

Ok, this is the point where the other laptop (which, by the way, I'm never using again) crapped on me.

The brother-in-law and I are going to see Van Halen in June. I haven't seen them in concert since 1992 and have never seen them with David Lee Roth, so it should be interesting, especially considering how good their new album is. I'm stating on record now that I'll be shocked if this thing doesn't win a Grammy next year for best rock album of 2012. There, I said it.

Back in 1992 I think I paid maybe thirty bucks to go to that show. My, how times have changed. This was my birthday, Father's Day and National Mutton Chops Day present, combined, I'm thinking. To my credit, I was talked into spending this money. Short of maybe seeing Jimi Hendrix rise from the dead, I don't think anyone is worth paying this kind of money to see in person.

By the way, don't ever buy these. Emily and I were looking for a healthy alternative for snack bars, and invested a substantial amount of money in a box of these from COSCO. They're aweful. They come in three favors, Rotting Ape Carcass (Banana Nut Crunch), Dirty Sock (Chocolate Covered Pretzel), and Peanut Butter Flavored Sheetrock. The last one is tolerable, the other two, at least if I have any say in it, will be collecting dust in the pantry, or become bird food.

Our small child is still enjoying swimming, now that she's reunited with Joey from Dawson's Creek. I took a few semi-action shots with the camera phone a few weeks ago, and here you can see the child displaying impeccable form in her backstroke.

Here she is hanging out, waiting her next turn with the instructor.

And here she is doing her best hidden dragon, crouching tiger impression. Sponge Bob is enthralled.




And without further ado, and keeping with the complete randomness that is today's blog post, I present to you Uni-Bill. Uni-Bill is getting married in June, and although because of a work trip, I will be unable to attend, we'll be heading to the misty mountains in April to pay our respects. Uni-Bill will be the father to a one or two-month old by then, so it should be an exciting time for all involved.

Finally, since I'm using the netbook for this post, spell check doesn't work for some reason, so I apologize for my fifth grade level abilities in that regards. At least I was able to make it through this post without any keyboard shenanigans.

More Santa Fe

The small child is on the couch with an ear that hurts, eating chocolate graham crackers and watching TV while the wife is napping. We're heading to the doctor soon, but don't worry, the small child is still singing along to the commercials, so she's feeling fine.

While I have a few minutes, here are a few more shots from our Santa Fe trip, these from my cell phone.

Here is Brenna at a cool restaurant we stumbled upon in Pecos, close to the national park we visited. She enjoyed some tasty cheese roll ups. Their key lime pie was tasty, but very tart.



They had oodles of insects behind glass at the aforementioned children's museum. Here are a few shots of the cases. Lots of butterflies in the first, and huge spiders in the second.





Finally, a shot of the indoor pool of death. I say that as we saw three different people fall on their who-ha's, just strolling along, minding their manners. The coating on the deck apparently turned to ice when wet, not the safest thing in the world.

More coherent blogs to follow when I have more than sixty seconds.