Noteworthy Sightings from the Road

I will put up some actual Thanksgiving pictures soon, but first, some road-pics that fit into the "Only on a 20 hour road trip" category. I am disappointed that I couldn't get my camera out in time for the plywood house, you'll just have to trust me that it was unique.

So this is why gas station coffee tastes like to does!(Actually this was a clever marketing ploy - just an ad for coffee at a travel plaza, but it made us look!)

BIG tires! I'm sure they were taller than our van.

Won't find this in Florida: This stadium's bleachers are carved into the hillside!

These people seriously need a pick-up truck!

So Road Trip A was a success - we made it home with all our brightly colored pillows, no one used the tiny potty, although we did have one in-van accident and one gotta-go-so-bad-she'll-just-squat incident, and the crafts were a huge hit

Baby Faces

Road Trip to Come

With two separate road trips coming up, we are going to be experimenting with 3 new (to us) ideas.

1. Porta-Potty - Annalise is now potty trained (it happened overnight about a month ago) and with only Natalie in diapers, I'm expecting a few unplanned potty stops. So (on some friends' advice) we will bring along the tiny-potty. Our friends suggested lining the cup with a plastic grocery bag for easy clean up.
2. Crafts in the Car - I've prepped a few crafts to make en-route. Some holiday themed, some not, regardless I figured with all the crumbs, spilled drinks and (hopefully not) vomit, a little craft mess won't be noticeable at all.
3. Loud pillow cases - Rob and I discovered long ago that unfamiliar pillows = bad sleep, so we like to bring our own, but white or off white pillow cases blend in when you are scanning a room to see if you forgot anything. I got 3 brightly colored pillow cases and hopefully that will ensure they make it home with us!

Birthday Wrap Up

We are officially done with kid birthdays for the year! Here are the parts that happened 'after the fact'.

Annalise's snail cake:

When I asked Annalise what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday, she was indecisive. We finally settled on a Snail Princess.

It was hard to ice the head, but how do you like those Starburst lips!


She shared her cake with Grandma Ramsay.

Caleb's Glass Bottomed Boat Ride:

Yesterday it finally happened that the weather was perfect and Rob was not busy. As the dry season is getting settled in, the weather part was getting easier to find.
Caleb was the only kid on the boat.


Barracuda!
We do have one more birthday this year...mine. We will be in Arkansas for that and they have already called Grandma Ramsay to request a horse cake like the one Aunt Lori made!

Another Birthday

Mako says, "The things I put up with..."
Yesterday was Mako's birthday (Observed - we adopted him in early January of 2004 and made up a birthday of November 12). He is 7 year old...in people years! In honor of his birthday we did absolutely nothing, but the kids made him this bead necklace today and he stole a chicken bone out of the trash can, so don't feel too sorry for him ;)

Small One

Our last little frog has hopped away - hopefully off to rid the world of more mosquitoes!

In this picture you can kind of see that his/her little toes have suction cups on them, so I'm assuming this is a tree frog.

Here is the whole story on this little frog:

About 2 or 3 months ago, my friend Stephanie was emptying her wading pool and noticed it was full of tadpoles. Knowing we like "stuff like that", she offered to bring us a few to raise. We set up a little pool for them and began the long wait. The tadpoles began to grow, but one day the pool was knocked over and Rob scooped up as many as he could and refilled the pool. Being a scientist, he knew the tap water would kill them, and being tenderhearted, he felt like dirt. They DID die and we DID forgive him.

The day they died, the kids and I decided to go to a nearby park and when we got their we found it was flooded with rain water and the water...was full of tadpoles! We had brought a baggie to collect some sand for a project, so we filled it with water and tadpoles instead. We even found some empty water bottles and filled them with "clean" water for their pool. We set them up in a safer place and the very next day I found a full bottle of declorinator at a garage sale.

So these tadpoles began to grow. (My kids call them pollywogs because of a video they saw.) And as they grew, I assumed they were these nasty buffo toads that swell up poison out of their backs so toxic it can kill a big dog. But instead they turned out to be treefrogs - so all these expectations I had were negative and instead we got these cute tiny frogs that I actually like. I really think there is a life lesson in there somewhere :)

More Garden Fauna

Our 2 legged tadpoles quickly became 4 legged tadpoles - and it turns out they are much easier to catch that way! I guess as swimming become less effective, they will hop out and away.
They did take a lot longer to change than the butterflies, I think part of it depends on the weather and since we are so tropical, maybe it goes faster here than in other places. These took about 5 weeks.

I also got some good pictures of this Long Tailed Skipper visiting Caleb's zinnias. It was not scared of us at all, or at least was so interested in the flowers, we didn't make it nervous.

This is actually my favorite picture of it!

Just Thinkin' About...

Tomorrow!


I love butterflies - and I love them so much more than tadpoles. But if you would like an update on them - they have legs now and I never seem to get a good picture of them.

Wordless Wednesday