in the meantime, enjoy these prickly pix of my cousin‘s ferocious hedgehog, pinelope.

i think i can i think i can i think i can

a little help here?

we had two, that’s right, two halloween parties this year.  my cousin’s anniversary bash was friday night and an old friend invited us to another on saturday night.  color us popular!  i managed to find a fun costume for $8 thursday night and, i’ve got to say, i really had a great time with it.

candy corn and convict

more pix below the fold*. Read the rest of this entry »

there was a lot of commotion in our backyard sunday as the superboat national finals championship race took place.  the boats were fast and very, very loud, lasting probably thirty minutes or so.

Start of the race

the clip really doesn’t do the noise justice.

Passing by

the race started to the east of us and was a big loop. we had a great view and could feel the reverberation of the noise.

Poor attempt at capturing how far they came out of the water

it was interesting to watch – for the first five minutes or so. after a few laps, it just felt like watching nascar and i couldn’t take anymore. it was too hot anyhow.

Turn two

i did peek out the window a few times to see if bud light was still crushing the others.

Bud Light dominated from start to finish

if nothing else, it certainly broke up the monotony of a sunday afternoon.

a post over at brandon’s puppy reminded me of a funny story that i probably never ranted, although i’m sure a few of you have heard it.  it has to do with my time as a goat–mommy.  in february of 2005, i had my first experience with midwifing.  my brother-in-law had several goats that he had to induce labor on and those kids had to be bottle-raised because of some disease that could have been passed on through the milk. 

i batted my big blue eyes at hubby and, next thing you know, i had two precious little kids to take home to ga. i don’t know if you’ve ever had a goatlet, but they are just the cutest and most playful little things!  they are also a little noisy when they feel insecure.  their bleating sounds just like a crying infant.  a loud crying infant.  they required several feeds a day at first so i worked from home a couple days and then we were able to ween them down a bit and we just went home for lunch to feed them during the day.    while we were home, we’d let them run around the backyard or garage but while we were at work, they stayed in a playpen in the tiled useless area off of our kitchen.  hubby was very concerned that someone was going to see us with them in the backyard or complain about the bleating and call the county because we were certainly not zoned for farm animals.  he worried over this quite a bit.  Read the rest of this entry »

this weekend we had my dad and his wife come to visit. we had a great time and i think they did too.

they missed the really impressive storm surge that we had thursday but the waves were still plenty big on friday
dad and rhena
hubby getting pulled around by his kite
ready for liftoff!
hubby and his kite
wii rocked!
wii rolled!
wii even golfed a bit
poor dad got beat by everyone

it seemed like my dad really enjoyed the wii. especially golf and bowling. other activities included walking around the marina, driving through our favorite shopping plaza (rhena’s got a bad foot and can’t walk much), looking for shells on the beach, swimming, hot tubbing, pokering, and conversing. it was a fun visit but having morning persons as houseguests can be tiring. i guess it was fair though because i kept them up way past their bedtime and they woke me up way before my weekend wake time. i was happy to get a three hour nap after they headed out yesterday though.

i plurked yesterday about the surge that we are getting from ike. i’m a little surprised because it’s a slightly bigger surge than we saw from gustav and gustav was much, much closer to us than ike. i didn’t expect to get very much from him. anyhow, these are some pix that do not at all portray how impressive it truly is.

that’s our dunes and walkway, i couldn’t catch the bigger surges that were coming up into the dunes and well under the walkway
this is between our property and the one next door, you can see in the sand how much higher it was getting
and just for reference, this is what our backyard usually looks like (i didn’t have any looking straight down at the walkway and dunes but this shows the area from the above pic)

forty-five minutes on the treadmill and walking the seventeen flights of stairs back home. i’m guessing that tomorrow will be a gymless day since my dad will be here. so far my five-day-a-week workout schedule is 0-2. i guess four days is better than none though. as a bonus, here is hubby kayaking tuesday when i was too tired from stair-climbing to join him:

(the earbuds are in because he got a family singing call at the same time i was singing to him)

dolphins

stingrays

alright, technically this isn’t our backyard – this is from our favorite hangout about four miles down the beach

why, yes, that is heaven shining down
that wall of clouds is an approaching storm; i love the look of weather over the gulf

today is nine years since our first not-a-date. i’m so happy he stole my phone number off of his roommate’s caller id and asked me to hang out with him – you know, since he was new in town and didn’t know anyone. we have been nearly inseparable since then and it has been a truly happy nine years.

(and might i just say how much i miss being that flippin’ small?!)

since it’s been a migrainy and stormy day complete with multiple power outages, what better time to get the pix downloaded and read to post, eh? so without further ado, my pride and joy – the favors!

step one – decorating the box

step two – decorating the other side of the box

step three – personalizing chop sticks
(no, i don’t know why blogger chose to turn the pic the wrong way)

step four – candy coating the contents
turns out fortune cookies and chow mein noodles are excellent when covered in chocolate

assembly complete – commence beaming pride!

who’d’ve thought i could create something so pretty?

pretty as punch

it was such a tasty spread

i should’ve taken a closeup of the picture frame

the guests seemed to have a good time

as did the bride

i am very glad that i was able to put together a shower for one of my best friends. although i’m just as happy that it’s over. party planning is hard, stressful work! i do need to give a huge thank you to my sister’s whole family who all chipped in to help with whatever they could (not to mention lending me their house). also, without my fabulous hubby, i never would have made it. he stuck in there with me until everything was done, even after the guests started showing up. he was beyond helpful!

my first attempt at a self-pedicure. i got stiffed on the tip because of the lack of foot/leg massage. maybe next time i’ll do better. in the meantime, my tootsies feel pretty.