Ferrets On Sabbatical

This morning the two ferrets that were taking up residence on my dome, Harry and Curly, vacated for the summer. With 100 degree temps forecasted for early next week, I woke up this morning with an overwhelming desire to make a clean start.

Seriously, my hair hasn't been this long in the front, well, ever. It was curling, laides and gentleman, in the FRONT. If I had held out until October, I could have pulled off a mean Kramer for Halloween, but it would have been a LONG, miserable summer.

Here is one final look at the hair, pre-cut.



Emily stopped mid-shave to suggest that we make this the final product, you know, a new fashion statement, Zoolander-style, but we pressed on despite the urge to make history.



Hmm, pondering the final result.



What have I done????



Our daughter, by the way, was very amused by this process, although she ran away when I asked her if she wanted her head shaved next. I can't imagine why.

Stop, Fart, And Roll

Hi again. Been a while. How are you? Great.

We're still hear, I somehow took a four or five day hiatus from posting here. I can't say as it was that busy a week, but here it is Friday night/Saturday morning, and all I have to share are some leftover pictures from last weekend and some other assorted nuggets.

Brenna continues to have some issues sleeping at night, constantly interrupted by tummy problems (hence the title of this fine post). Emily is making some modifications to her diet in hopes of alleviating some of the symptoms, and we're going in on the 20th for a check up with the allergist to see if wheat or dairy are now causing problems for our little one's digestive system.

Outside of that news, there isn't much else to share. My greatest accomplishment this week was ridding myself of an old file cabinet that had been haunting our garage for the last couple of years (it finally made it's way out in the trash). Wow, how is that for newsworthy?

Ok, so Grandma Becky is still feeling much maligned for my choice of pictures of her in this blog. I'm told I tend to find the most unflattering pictures imaginable, where she appears to be dumbfounded, or otherwise stoned out of her gourd.

Hey, here's a much better picture. Everyone is happily riding along on the ostrich mobile, and even my out of control hair is cut out of the frame. Everyone wins on this one, right?

One of the guys from Hanoi Rocks was in the aviary with us last weekend, he's behind Brenna feeding one of the moochers with wings. Our daughter is a little concerned with having one so close to her (the bird, not the guy with the weird hair... okay, I'm one to talk).

Seriously, something must be done about the hair, it must be stopped before it takes over the world. This is a neat picture of Picacho Peak, one you don't see from the Interstate (and certainly not graced by ostriches and family members). I think Grandpa Ron might even have part of an ostrich in his hat, I can't quite tell, but it sounds good, I can't imagine a better place for an ostrich to be than in someone's hat.

Please come back, it's not always like this here. I promise some new pictures of Brenna soon, she's getting dedicated this weekend at church, that should make for something worth sharing. And there's Mother's Day, that's always good for a kick in the pants. There will be grilling... smoke, fire and meat are pretty photogenic. It should be pushing 100 this weekend, sweaty faces are good for blogging as well. If the stars align, I'll post a picture of sweaty people wielding grilling utensils with dripping meat hanging off them, with a raging fire in the background. Ah, if only...

Playing In The PJs

Here are a few pictures of Brenna playing last night before bedtime.

Ostrich Farm!

Someone in the family got a wild hair to suggest that we all round up and go to an Ostrich farm today. Go figure. In the end it was quite the hoot.

Where we went was about 50 miles north of Tucson, the first picture is of the monster truck that took us on a tour of the facilities.

Here is Emily bravely feeding these nasty creatures. They're not too polite in taking food from you, Rachel got bitten on the hand (to the point of drawing blood) while attempting to feed them directly, rather than though the chute you see below in this picture.

Brenna was a pill most of the weekend, but she enjoyed this place for the most part. Seeing grandma cheered her up, here the two of them are walking up the giant ramp to board the tour truck.

So far, so good, as Emily and Brenna pose while on the tour, which took us through feeding facilities and some other places.

Here's an ostrich protecting it's eggs, this was also along the tour route.

Something must be done about my hair, and this is Exhibit A. Here we are rolling up and down some bumpy road on the truck. In a few places we caught some air going down dips and over hills.

Emily and Brenna took some time to feed the deer, they were pretty polite with the hand feeding.

Exhibit B, a bird building a nest in the clump of dead ferrets on my head.

Our daughter is becoming rather fond of picking her nose. You'll see more pictures like this in the future.

See, I told you so.



One of the better shots in the aviary. Brenna wouldn't let any of these guys land on her, but enjoyed them from a safe distance.

One More Look At Chattanooga



Here are a few more pictures from our trip last week. Brenna's bottom two canines came in at seemingly the same time, so to say she's been a bit on edge this weekend so far would be an understatement. Needless to say we won't be posting any pictures of her until her mood changes a tad. In the meantime, let's go back to the past for a bit.

Here's a nice shot of Brenna after she wandered through the fountain at the park, I posted a shot of this fountain a few days ago.

Here's Brenna after playing peekaboo with her washcloth, she was very pleased with herself.

Here we are on the back porch watching it rain last Sunday. Brenna insisted on taking her giant (on loan) Winnie the Pooh with her.

Another shot of Brenna at the water exhibit at the discovery museum. Grandma H is looking on.



They had a cool dinosaur dig exhibit at the museum, Brenna and I are looking for bones in this shot.

The observation deck at the top of the museum was closed due to the "bad weather". It had rained the day before and was a tad windy when we were there the following day, but it was pretty nice, all in all. I didn't see the sign, so here's a shot of Chattanooga from the deck. Bad Tom.

Still at the museum, Brenna is checking out a neat car in the home living exhibit. They had a huge play kitchen, but she was more interested in this thing and going down a slide that they had in there.

Finally, still at the museum, despite the weight of ten pounds of hair on my head, I managed to pull myself up via this pulley system. Wonders never cease.

Brenna Skills

Here's a nice video of Brenna counting to eleven, ala Spinal Tap ("Why don't you just make Brenna louder at 10? This Brenna goes to 11"), identifying numerous shapes and colors. We seemed to be rather fixated with the number 8 and yanked mama's chain when asked to identify the color red. Anyway, see for yourself, it's a long one, but worth the watch!

BTW - I just watched this uploaded on the blog and there seems to be a pretty good lag between the audio and video, so you may have to take my word for it that she's properly identifying her colors (except red, of course). After Emily draws a spitting image of myself, the audio starts to lag pretty bad, maybe it's my connection.

Flying Home

Here are a few pictures of Brenna flying home yesterday from Nashville. She did well on the ride back to the airport from Chattanooga (other than going postal about the prospect of getting french fries at Wendys only to be turned away when they weren't taking plastic).

Emily bought Brenna the Diego and Dora beanie collection to keep her occupied on the plane, and that more than did the trick (plus our portable DVD player, which was a lifesaver all the way around).

Here Brenna is holding Diego and baby jaguar while standing at Emily's feet. We were thankful to have a free row to ourselves coming and going (flying mid week each direction probably helped).

There's a trend you'll see in these pictures, Diego is firmly in our daughters hand at every turn.

Here she is being a big girl, strapped into her own seat, and watching who else, but Diego on the DVD player.

And here she is finally at home, showing off her floral headdress thingy that she got at the Ren Fair in Atlanta.

To date, in her 18 months here, our little girl has:

- Flown to Nashville from Phoenix two times

- Flown to Pennsylvania from Phoenix (via Chicago)

- Ridden from Nashville to Chattanooga to Atlanta twice

- Ridden from Phoenix to Las Vegas

- Ridden from Phoenix to Colorado Springs

Quite a number of miles under the old belt! Next year we'll be trying Hawaii in the Fall (and we'll be buying a second battery for our DVD player for that six hour flight!).

Children's Discovery Museum

Wrapping up our trip to Chattanooga, Emily, myself, Grandma H and Brenna went to the Discovery Museum this afternoon. It wasn't crowded in the slightest, and in some instances we were the only people playing with certain exhibits, so that made our visit very pleasant. Like our other activities, I have a slew of other pictures not posted here, and will upload some bonus shots once we get home later this week.

Below, Brenna is playing with some duckies in a water exhibit that she found most enjoyable, playing here for at least twenty minutes before we were allowed to move on. It's here that I got a small bucket of water splashed on me after I told our daughter to stop dumping water out of the pool. Ah, that crafty Brenna.



Here we are thrilled to be having our picture taken for the hundredth time today.



In the same area we found some cool tables to color on, as well as on paper. Chalk and crayons were involved. I'll post some more of these over on the Brenna Art Gallery blog when time permits.



Mambo! Here Brenna is enjoying the music room, getting down to the guitar and drums that played on command here.



In another area of the music exhibit, Brenna and Emily explore the studio space with a cowbell.



Musical inspiration turned into a wrestling free-for-all, with Brenna beating me senseless (not really) with a recently found drumstick.



This next beauty of a picture is for Grandma Becky, who claims I'm always singling her out for not so flattering pictures of her that get posted here. I don't think it can get much worse than this.



Ah, some magic from Brenna, playing the The Entertainer on the piano like a pro.



Outside the museum, Grandma H pulled Brenna up in a swing via a pulley system. Emily and I later did the same with ourselves, much to our satisfaction.



More pictures to follow, stay tuned!

Brenna On The Road (Part Deux)

If you're going to blog at all, you have to come out of the gate with the best picture you've got. Well, this first one may not be the best, but it's the most entertaining one out of the lot from the latest leg of our trip to Georgia.

Brenna is enjoying eating Oreo cookies with Emily in the hotel in Conyers in this first shot. I'll post a few more from this evening once I've had a chance to truly review what I've got on our camera. I can't find a good image editor on my parents computer, which also explains why when you click on these to enlarge them, they're huge (not cropped to fit your screen).

While in Conyers we visited with my cousins Bill and Audrey, who unfortunately didn't get to spend any time with Brenna, who was over travelling and not in the mood to visit with anyone she wasn't that familiar with. I was able to visit with everyone out by the hotel pool while Brenna took in a monster (and much needed) three hour nap.

Mmmm, Oreos.



While in the area, we spent a few hours at the Georgia Ren Fair (cut short by rain). Here is Brenna on a swing that almost dumped her on her head (we excitedly tried to exit said swing on our own, and flipped over the "safety" rope).



We ran into Grandma Sheila and my half-brother Ryan while at the fair, which was a nice treat. We spent a little bit of time visiting and wrestling in the grass. How lucky our little girl is to have seen two grandmas this trip, AND she has a third waiting anxiously for her return back to Arizona in the next few days!



Moving along to the following day, before Grandpa Ron left for a golf trip, Brenna is seen here punishing him for leaving early by pummeling him in the head with a soccer ball. Below is the aftermath of the ball bouncing off his head.



To make sure the job was done properly, Brenna then proceeded to lull Grandpa Ron into a sense of complacency by handing him her beloved Diego action figure, only to pop him in the head with another ball when he wasn't looking. You can see from her expression that her mission was accomplished.



Exhausted from beating up on Grandpa, Brenna is seen here spending some quiet time with her new best friend, a monstrous Winnie The Pooh.



We proceeded to take Winnie the Pooh out to the back porch to watch it rain this afternoon. There are better pictures of us while out there, and I'll post more when I have a better chance to see what we've got on the camera.



Tomorrow we're going to the Children's Discovery Museum in downtown Chattanooga and I'll try to post some pictures from that before we leave for home on Tuesday. ALSO, I've taken pictures of Grandma's yard in bloom and will post some of those on the Hoes blog very soon.