Extreme Birthday'ing

In the same vain as extreme skydiving, extreme bungee jumping, and extreme hot dog eating, I present to you extreeeme birthday'ing.

You can't have an extreme birthday without an extreme cake. Red and brown just screaams extreme. This fantabulous cake was presented by Emily, and was her best foray thus far into the realm of egg-less cake making.



And of course, you can't have an extreme cake without an extreme guest. Emily's grandma, who was in town from the anti-hell state, also known as Colorado, was the lucky recipient of said extreme cake. She's overjoyed! And who can blame her, just look at that cake! Yowza!

Here is the extreme birthday guest, posing with two of her extreme grandchildren. Well, Rachel looks extreme, Brenna looks, hmmm, peaceful?

Perhaps she was that way because she knew some extreme cake was coming her way! Yes sir, that must be it. There was nothing left of this slice except little bits of red Styrofoam plate scattered across the floor. This picture was sponsored by Sophia's foot.

And you can't have an extreme birthday party without breaking out a tea set! And these aren't your normal run of the mill, lead based, spawned in a sweat shop, tea sets. No sir, this is the real deal Hollyfield! The small child was well pleased. Extreme!



And last, but certainly not least, the extreme "which camera do I look at" birthday shot! I got two and Beth got the others, but all together an extreme picture for the archives!

Editor's Note: In honor of Ron's fine Chuck Norris shirt... I hear Chuck Norris tried to put out his own line of toilet paper, but it failed miserably because it wouldn't take (censored) from anyone.

Good night!

I'm In A Car... And I'm Siiingiing!!!

For those of you that have not friended me/us on Facebook, shame on you. You're missing out on lots of pictures, lazily uploaded there for your quick Brenna fix.

For those of you that continue to patiently wait for some nugget of wisdom to come emanating from my mouth, God bless you. I continue to make an effort to post updates here, if anything, to prove to myself that I'm not a one-trick Facebook pony.

Today, kind of on the spur of the moment, we took a ride up to Camp Verde, about two hours from here. I had been wanting to go back to Montezuma's Castle, at the very least, to finally collect a park stamp in my little National Park traveller book that I've had for the last four or five years. Brenna has a similar one, that has every park in it that she's been to since her birth. Hopefully one day she will grow to appreciate having something like that.

At any rate, my hope was that it would be slightly cooler there than here. While it was indeed cooler (92, compared to 106), it was very sticky, and despite the shade on the interpretive trail, it was pretty nasty. Needless to say, we paid an average of a dollar a minute for how long we were there, versus our admittance fee. If you venture over to Lazytown, aka, Facebook, you'll see some other trip related pictures, but only here, for our rabid blog followers, will you be able to witness our small child bellowing to one of her Glee CDs, while we rode back home this afternoon.

First, a token picture of our destination.





And secondly, what you came here for. Here she is, warming up to whatever song was playing for the hundredth time in a row. Something about loving someone and mashed potatoes, I'm not sure, it all runs together to me.






Despite the traffic lights request that she cease and desist, Brenna soldiers on, slowly moving to the climax of said re-baked song.




Yes! We're almost at the finale. Hands triumphantly waving, it's just a matter of time before that last note is struck, and I can enjoy the two seconds of silence before the next remake that didn't ever need to exist begins.




And there it is. Ladies and gentleman, a star is born. I'd never be allowed out of the house again if I was caught doing this to a Voivod (still the greatest Canadian heavy metal band to walk the earth) song, whilst in the car with the family; but if the small child can get away with it, perhaps I can as well. Dare to dream.

Eye On The Prize

This past weekend we spiffed up the house for an open house. Hopefully we can keep things nice and tidy for the legroom, going forward.

Emily baked a tasty calomonden cake that gives me heartburn with every serving, but chased with a pair of Tums, and it's mmm delicious.

Rachel spent the night on Saturday, here she is dancing with Brenna with the Wii. Oh, those crazy, flexible kids.

And being useful as ever, here we see the small child posing in the sewing/guest/exercise room with a new friend.

For the record, Blogger doesn't know how to spell calomonden, either. Ha.

No Excess Baggage

I keep forgetting now that I'm clocking in for work at 5 in the morning that my day is officially over at 2 in the afternoon, adding a little bonus time before the fam gets home to do constructive things like... post another blog! Well, that's just special now, isn't it.

This past weekend, Brenna and Emily baked some sugar cookies, and decorated them up with some gel frosting (is that what it's called, I'm so not an expert on such things). We won't go into the lively discussion had at Wal Mart about which package of frosting the small child wanted to pick up.

Anyway, frosting in the end was obtained, and here is the proof.

And yet more proof. By golly, we've got frosting!

Here's a shot of the cookie-faced small child, caught in the act of, well, doing something. Since we can't see her arms, there's no telling. Perhaps punching me in the gut Sean Pean style for getting too up close and personal. She doesn't look terribly happy here. Yes, perhaps that was the issue.

And finally, the fruits of Brenna's labor. A multi-eyed, smirking rabbit for your dining pleasure.

Been A Long Time Since I Posted A Blog

Still here... been around.

This is probably the first blog posted on our new laptop; I loathe the keyboard, the shift and control button are not perfectly conformed to my hands. I'll get most of the way through posting this and will hit the wrong button and wipe everything out, mark my words .

I can't proceed any further without giving the required monsoon weather update. It rained today. Yes, indeed, and by golly, it actually rained when the clouds gathered. No dust storm or fruitless thunder and lightning, just a good fashioned (albeit short) frog strangler from the bank to our house this afternoon.

Continuing with complete randomness, here's a picture of Brenna getting ready for our recent trip to St. Louis. She did extremely well for 20 hours in the car, one-way, so well that we managed to cover 1450 miles in two days on the way back leaving us with a days vacation to sit around the house and unwind. Lovely.



Along the way we saw this scary beast of a storm.

One word: Cow.




Here we are with my parents walking across the Mississippi.

And here we are posing in front of the arch. Well, we, meaning everyone except me.

Here's a shot of the backseat passengers.

And finally, rocking my sign for victory as we approached home. I was, of course, parked safely in our driveway when Brenna took this picture of me.

As time permits, and to allow myself the ability to drag some more blog posts out of this trip, stay tuned for more pictures. Damn you Facebook, I will not conform and post a hundred pictures of St. Louis because it's easy. Good night.

Household Epidemic

At first it was one.

Then two more fell stricken.

We knew we were in trouble when Senor Bird became ill.

Barely There

The child just came in to me and said something in her incoherent gibberish langauge, and then wrapped it up with "and that's all I have to share with you". Yes, my thoughts exactly for this past week of non-posting. I'm getting ready to spend a week in New Jersey for work, with another trip to Wichita shortly thereafter. I'm digging deep these days for the Lord to grant me the serenity needed not to completely lose my mind with stress over two major projects coming one after the other, with a number of other things to wrap up right behind that. I'm doing better this go around, compared to my trip to San Francisco last November. Despite how bad I was expecting that one to be, God showed me that things work out if you leave it with Him, so I'm making more of an effort this go around to follow suit, and so far so good. God first, family second, work third, those are the Biblical priorities, and that sounds pretty good to me.

No pictures to share at this point, although the small child has been entertaining as usual. Tonight, she was entertaining us with impresions of various animals, including the normal ones like dogs, cats, and the like. She graduated to polar bears, lions, turtles, and a pretty sweet waddling penguin. Her encore was an aligator snapping robot that dispensed candy out of its head, perhaps like a Pez dispenser. It goes on from there. Hopefully before I leave town this Saturday, I'll upload some shots from around the yard to the completely neglected Hoes blog.

Until then.

This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us

Two posts in two days, man am I on a roll.

Here are a few more pictures from yesterday's Spring extravaganza.

The weather is good, getting better over the next few days. Should be perfect for my roses to settle in before the June heat kills them. Oh, I'm quite the pessimist. Or realist. Or fascist. Or something. Hmm.

Anywho, it's beginning to look like my two work trips this year will be multiplying to four, with yet another vacation attempt aborted in the process. Who on God's earth converts on a Friday? At least it's Florida and Hawaii, I can't complain about the locations, but may be disappearing off the face of the earth from Thanksgiving until New Years.

Stay tuned for some middle of the night ramblings, I will riding the caffeine train hard between now and my May 1 trip to New Jersey, and plenty in between that one and Kansas on June 1. It's going to get ugly around here.

Another Day At The Farm

It took me a while to remember how to post a blog here, complete with pictures. All of the steps involved slowly came back to me, like resizing the pictures so they're not enormous when viewed, uploading them in the reverse order you want them displayed in your post, etc. In actuality, a bit of a pain, but I refuse to conform to the utter laziness of uploading enless photos with three word descriptions on Facebook. That site has it's place in the world, but not for blogging, and I will do my best to find the time to keep this site alive, God help us all.

The following is a photo log of our past two weekends.

Last weekend didn't get off to a very good start, as we discovered this grizzly accident in the bedroom, first thing on Saturday morning. A terribly crime, indeed, but all have to move on.

Brenna spent some time blowing bubbles with her favorite cousin last weekend. Fun was had by all.

Afterwards, or perhaps before, cookies were made and enjoyed by all. Cousin Rachel is perhaps unsure of the process, or maybe caught completely off guard by the picture taker, whomever that was. I dig Brenna's shirt, all of them should be an homage to her father, in my humble opinion.

Mmmm, cookies.

The first fashion statement of the Spring, matching hat with dress and shoes. The small child was running after a ball in this picture, perhaps a soccer uniform... if you're in the Swiss Alps.

And this weekend, another nice outfit. Brenna is seen hear serving up some "ice cream" for me as I'm taking her picture.



After numerous mediocre shots, Brenna graces me with her presence one final time for the best picture of the day, in my opinion.

Back In The Saddle (Maybe)

Sorry, been a while. I've so not been motivated these past five months to monitor this blog, and since I've been away, I've had 157 spam-related messages attempt to post here. But, on the flip-side, the site somehow generated another five dollars in Brenna income from these foreign hackers, so take that ass monkeys.

Should I continue to feel moved by the spirit (or something similar) to continue on with this, please check in periodically. There are many a Brenna picture to post, and while Facebook is a convenient way to slap a number of them up at one time, the ability to share stories there is not the same as it is here in Blogville.

Torn between laziness and motivation, I continue to be sincerely yours.

The T in Tebot

Been Around

This is by far the longest time between updates here. We've been a smidge busy, to say the least.

Since our last update, I've been to San Francisco for work. Here's a shot from my hotel room.

We've been to Hawaii. Here's a shot from Punchbowl.

I've thrown Brenna into the ceiling (well, close).

Hey, here's Brenna showing off a new fall outfit. It's finally under 80 degrees, hurray!

And just today, she helped Mommy make more sugar cookies.

Finally, this morning, Brenna helped me plant some poinsettas and about two dozen seeds in pots. Whew!

A Day At The Arboretum

Here are a few shots of us at one of my favorite places in town, the Arboretum. Brenna is now officially old enough to enjoy the place, and walk around on her own quite a bit.

Here we are strolling along, talking about the Stock Market, or something equally deep, I'm sure.

Here we are again, crossing a bridge, and discussing some other serious matters. Actually, as I recall, the small child didn't want us to rock the bridge while we went across.

Pictured here is Brenna checking out the Clevenger House with Emily.

Posing inside the house.

Out of order here, Brenna and Emily walking up to the same house, through a nice herb garden.

Brenna being a human sundial in the new Children's Discovery area. This was worth the price of admission.

And finally, the spoils of humoring Daddy by going to a park with no swings or slides.