In anticipation of Zombies....

Oh MY Goodness!!! This is going to be a fantastic Zombiastic year!!! Can. Not. Wait. Until. October 13th!

Mimi's Summer Day Camp -- Day Twelve, Bugs! Week

We continued with bug week, but also wanted to go see the dinosaurs at the Witte Museum, since we didn't get to go last week.

 First thing in the morning we went looking for bugs outside.  The very first thing we found by turning over a rock was this nasty scorpion! Yuck! 

 Then we went inside and drew bugs on a big page of brown paper.  KT is 

drawing a centipede there.

 Then we took off for town.  After  lunch at Red Robin (they have the perfect mac and cheese bowl!), we arrived at the Witte.

 Inside we found a bunch of animatronic dinos!  

6 KT enjoyed the iPads that each of the displays had for exploring more about the dinos.

 She went into the pit to try her hand at archeology.  She was brushing away the sand to find the dinosaur bones.  There were a lot of kids in this thing, she really enjoyed this.

 KT didn't want to turn her back on these dinosaurs, but she did for my photo op!

 After the dinosaurs, we went to see the Texas Wild displays.  They had bugs!!!

 There was a huge centipede in this display....KT gave me her "scared" face!

 Identifying bugs.

This display had a prairie dog (he's right there in front of that log with the holes in it.) 

 KT and Grumps are on their way to see the BIG dinosaur display out on the lawn.

They are protected by TESS, Inc., John's company!  Jeff did a lot of this project.  So proud of them for getting this job.

Mom on Wednesday, 7/24/2013

She was back up in her chair today!

Galeux Squash

I harvested one of these Galeux D'Eysines squash this week.  It's pretty warty! This was the only one that made it.

Mimi's Summer Day Camp -- Day Eleven, Bugs! Week

Whew, what a busy day at camp!

 We started at the library -- they had lots and lots of books about bugs.

 We broke out the fake bugs, and spent a lot of time lining them up, scaring Mimi with them, and generally having a lot of fun with them.  We made a big green grasshopper out of foam sheeting, googlie eyes, and pipe cleaners.  We drew some bugs on paper (KT is very good about knowing how to draw ants...she does those so well!)

 At lunch time we watched a movie, AntZ!  After lunch we played outside for a while, and then....

KT and Grumps both crashed!

Movie Review ---- R.I.P.D.

Well, again, I really wanted to love this one..it has all the elements of a big summer block buster, a great actor (Jeff Bridges) and a cutie pie (Ryan Reynolds), but....something just didn't quite gel.  It was a fun movie, lots of comedy and action, with some great graphics. The undead were well done, but seemed like a re-tread.  It reminded me a lot of Ghostbusters.  Bridges really chews up the scenery with his old cowboy self...he used almost the identical voice he used in True Grit.  The story was so-so.  I had no idea that Kevin Bacon was going to be in this movie, he didn't show up in any of the previews.  That was a surprise.
I give it a 3, but John says 2.5, and I say wait until it comes to the small screen.  I wish we had gone to see Reds 2 instead.  Sigh.....

Mimi's Summer Day Camp -- Day Ten, Dino Week

Summer Day Camp on Thursday was interrupted by Grumpy being sick, so I went in to KT's house to stay with her there instead of being out here, just in case Grumps was contagious.  Turns out he just having a few bad allergy days, but we wanted to be careful.  We were scheduled to go see the Dinosaur Exhibit at the Witte Museum, but will try to go see it this coming week instead.

We created a little dinosaur village with KT's dinosaurs, but most of the day we just visited.  She is so much fun.
Not many pictures today, though....

 KT doesn't fit in her ducky towel any more....

Ready to go to dance class!

Two little Wrens....

Addie Wren

We were visited by two little Wrens on Saturday evening!  I wasn't sure how Ella was going to take it with KT not being here, but she seemed to take it in stride and just took control of the two Grandpas.

It was hilarious....come here, go there, take me here, let's look at this, ride on the Donkey, pick eggs, check out the horses...she was on a ROLL...with two Grandpas just trailing behind her.

Meanwhile, Grandma Hoyt and I got to concentrate on little Addie.  She's growing so fast.  Her newest trick is crawling! And she can pick herself up and hang on to the furniture standing up.  She still loves the walker and spent a bit of time rolling around the pavilion.  

Ella Wren

Who's that peeking in the window?

Our busy project...

We finally got around to painting our office upstairs.  Does everyone have one room that just seems to collect this and that until the room is almost unusable?  We had just shoved stuff in there for so long, it was a catch all and we just never went in there.  It was time to correct that problem. I donated about 100 old paperback books to the library and I have a large pile of old VHS tapes I'm taking to them this week for their First Saturday book sale.  John took two trips to Goodwill and a very large pile to the County Dump.  That felt so good...just to de-clutter.  I tend to hang on to too much stuff, so if I wasn't using it - it was out of here!

 Now the room is "Truly Olive" with white trim and we put up new white blinds to match the rest of the upstairs rooms. So much better.

We have some company coming, so for now we're leaving a sleeper sofa in there, but will move the desk and printer, etc. in after they've gone.
Lots of work, but so worth it!
Now...time to paint the downstairs bathroom.....

Fruits of our labors...

We finally ate the Delice de la Table melon.  It turned totally orange after being in the house for a couple of days and it smelled heavenly.  The whole house smelled of it.

 The taste was good, but not too sweet like I was expecting. I'm thinking if I had let it sit a few more days it would have sweetened even further. It was a good cantalope, though, and it weighed 7.2.2 pounds, so it took us several days to finish.

I saved seeds, and there are about three more out in the garden still, so I call this one a big WIN!

Flowers

 The datura plant has spawned these weird seed pods.  Don't they look like something from outer space? I read up on them and found that this plant can cause delirious states and even death.  It was a well known essential ingredient in love potions and witches' brew.  Boiling the seeds into a tea can cause hallucinations and even death.  Will be careful not to do that!  

My gorgeous morning glories.  You cannot believe how brilliant (almost a neon blue) some of these are.  There's a new type with a fern-like leaf that have tiny hot pinkish red flowers on them. They're a cypress vine.  I hope I can collect seeds from them this year.  They are all so beautiful to look at from the house.

Mimi's Summer Day Camp -- Day Nine, Dino Week!

Finally it's Dinosaur week!  KT just loves dinos.  We started by identifying some of the little dinosaurs that KT has in her collection.  She knows the name and look of T-Rex, and some of the more common ones, but she and Grumpy spent some time looking the others up on his computer.

Then KT and I were off to the library for a little over an hour.  We checked out some books about dinosaurs and a couple of movies to enjoy this week.

After lunch KT swam for a while then we watched The Land Before Time, Journey to Big Water.

We had a grand time today!  More dino adventure coming on Thursday!

Sara, the Triceratops!

Movie Review --- Pacific Rim

A W E S O M E !!!  Totally awesome!
Earth has been under attack by a race of aliens, the Kaiju, intent on harvesting the planet's riches and exterminating us puny humans.  You will totally recognize Del Toro's hand in creating the Kaiju -- they are his signature creature, although much larger.

We creative humans have countered these aliens by creating large robots, the Jaegers, that are powered by joining the brains of two people who ride in the head of the robot and control the limbs.  There's the Chinese robot, the Russian robot, the Australian robot....you get the drift (which is a little pun on what they all it when the brains of the two connect...drifting.)

I was hoping they wouldn't over do the robot combat stuff, and they didn't.  The battles are not so long you forget why they are doing it in

the first place, which is genius of the director.  I do lose interest if its nothing but action all the time. There's just the right amount of story, character building, serious action, and comedy relief.  Idris Elba plays the main character, Stacker Pentacost, and does a great job of making you care about these people. The two scientists that are trying to "understand" the Kaiju are hilarious, and Del Toro favorite, Ron Pearlman, plays a black-market Kaiju organ salesman and just chews up the scenery. Hilarious!!! He meets a grisly death....deserved in some ways.

I loved it, John loved it, and we both give it 4 stars and I wish there was a follow up movie to hope for.

What We're Watching on TV - Primeval

We've been slowly working our way through the BBC series Primeval.  We started watching the new Canadian version (Primeval New World) and got interested in the prior series.   It's pretty good, especially season 1.
The creatures are especially good the first two seasons.  Season three they have obviously had a change in creature makers, some are not so great and even cartoonish.  But we're enjoying the show and the actors in it anyway.
The series ran from 2007 to 2011 and we're in Season 3 now. I wonder why we never watched this before.  I highly recommend it!

Garden goodies....

 We had our first taste of the fried okra on Thursday night.  Oh my goodness! So so so good. 

This tomato is fast becoming one of my favorites!  The Lemon Boy is giving me about one large tomato a week, and they are blemish free for the most part, and very delicious. Totally yellow.  You have to try one of these.

These are the first of the tomatillo coming from the plants.  Some are totally purple, and some have purple streaks.  The plants are huge and are just now starting to show some fruit. Tomatillo salsa coming soon!

Mimi's Summer Day Camp -- Day Eight, Sports Week

Today we celebrated sports in several ways..... first we went with Grump's to the golf course in Bandera, Texas, and rode all around on the golf cart!

It was fun and although it was very hot, we found a lot of trees to park under the shade.

We fed the geese on the course.  They seemed to like crushed cheese nips!

So did the minnows and the turtles!

KT helped Grumps by delivering towels and pointing out where to aim when he putts.

KT enjoyed a few snacks on the cart, including these delicious sugar free oreos!

Then we hit up the Bandera Dairy Queen.  We pointed out that her momma spent a lot of time at this place after school and running around with her high school friends.  KT really liked that idea.

We took her by the high school and told her about all the sports that her mother played in high school.  

Time to cool off in the pool!

And then time to dress in her new dance class clothes and off we went to deliver her in time!  We had a great week!