the thing right by a gutter...

This is a video I've been wanting to post for a while now. It was taken about a month ago at a local Mexican restaurant, Sol De Jalisco, that we go to a lot.

Because the volume is kind of low, I thought it was hard to make out what we are saying at times. So, below the video is a narration ~ just in case you need it ~ of what is being said.

Just as I turned on the camera, this is the conversation that took place...

Jack: "Is it just me or is it a little unnecessary the anatomical correctness of the bulls?"

Jack: "is that a little like...maybe more then we need?" "..maybe like less dangling?"

Meanwhile Madi and Jason are looking all around - confused.

Jack: "...like one less each?"

Jason says: "What?"

I say: "those bulls up there."

Then I say to Jack: "they have no idea." and just then Jason gets it and starts laughing.

Jack says: "Could you imagine if you were the little craftsman that had to put it together...make sure that piece was just property so?"

I say: "Madi is still trying to figure it out."

Jason says: "It really looks like their tail."

Jack: "yeah...unfortunately it's not hanging from their bottom"

I turn the camera toward Jack and he says "Gordita" (I had ordered an avocado gordita for dinner and he had been calling me that - which, by the way, he tells me means "little fatty")

Jason then says to Madi: "you can't figure it out, can you?"

Madi says: "Where?"

Jack says: "No, just, just leave it"

Jason: "You're too young" (too funny!)

I say to Madi: "Madi, just...it's fine." I was feeling sorry for her because she wanted to be in on it too! So, I say "They are talking about their parts."

Madi says: "OH, the part of the cow?"

Jack: "it's not a cow...it's not a cow."

Jason: "it's a Brahma Bull."

Madi: "the little thing that's hangin' out of it's legs?" (so innocent!)

Jason: "it's not little"

Jack: "not if it was real life it wouldn't be."

and then Madison says: "the thing right by a gutter?" (HILARIOUS)

Jack: "huh?" and I tell him, "she thinks it's right by it's gutter" and he says: "I don't get it." and I say: "she thinks it's the UTTER!"

We all laugh a good laugh and Jack says, "Oh Madi, it's a good thing we don't have a ranch." and then he asks me if I'm taking a video and asks me to turn it off - boo.

But, seriously, this is a day in our life. It's always laughs when Jack is around!

unwelcome visitor

We recently had another unexpected and fairly unwelcome visitor to our backyard garden. I was at work at the time and got a "what should I do?" type phone call from Olivia. This came at an extremely busy and stressful time in my job (there have been an awful lot of those lately) and I was probably less helpful with how to deal with another weird worm in the garden. I was told that he was really "cute".

I was pretty sure from the start that this was not a friend no matter his appearance and when Olivia described the suspect, we discovered that we had a tomato hornworm. These are the larva of the beneficial Five Spotted Hawk Moth but, they are destructive to our tomatoes so, they had to go. As we are now squash-less and zucchini-less thanks to the S.V.B.s (Squash Vine Borers), we don't need to lose any more of our produce. This is especially true considering all the time and energy that have gone into the garden to this point. What I was probably unprepared for was the sheer size of this worm. I am not real squeamish when it comes to squishing bugs and apparently, I am also less likely to make friends with them than Olivia. All told, we were less ready to handle this visitor than we could have been.

My poor wife "dealt" with the tomato hornworm as best as she could by throwing a large rock down onto it and then nearly vomited. I might have been able to be a little more casual about it than that but, no such luck. I have since done some follow up research and found that as already stated, the adult moth is a valuable pollinator for a variety of plants and if you can find a neighbor to unwittingly harbor the hornworm until metamorphosis takes place(thanks 5th grade science!) not a bad backyard visitor. But, the larval form...the worm is not beneficial as it will slowly devastate your tomato or pepper plants. The worms are huge, move slowly and blend in to the foliage of your plants very well. One tip I've read is that under black light, these worms fluoresce or glow and can be easily spotted and picked off. They are also apparently irresistible to ducks so, in the interest of continuing to be a green "weirdo", the next time we find tomato hornworms in our garden, I'll be in the yard, at night, with a black light, picking huge glowing worms off the plants, and then feeding them to the nearest group of ducks I can find.

just before the smashing In the meantime, it has been pretty cool to enjoy what we have been growing made into a couple of varieties of home-made salsa, tomato sauces and other fresh spices and seasonings to help feed our growing "Food Network" habit.

our three tomato plants worked overtime last week these were all picked within three days ~so, we are constantly playing with tomato recipes.

working on our homemade Crema Sauce

our guacamole, salsa & Crema Sauce

our first try at Salsa ~ a fire roasted salsa our second try at salsa. this one is more of a fresh salsa - no cooking involved. a Mint & Cilantro dip. the red flakes are Serrano peppers (some of our Serrano peppers turned out red). for a snack ~ Triscuit crackers topped with tomatoes (of course!) feta cheese & fresh basil.

tomato mozzarella salad with fresh basil and oregano

Essential

I wanted to take just a few minutes to talk about someone who has no idea how special she is. This person, has no idea that she is wonderful and the quote that adorns the side of our blog is meaningful to us because I came across it several years ago and emailed it to her because it was more true for her than anyone I had ever known. You see, she doesn't know that she is beautiful, she can't see the way she can light up a room or hear the music that we do when she laughs. She has no idea how much joy her smile brings to all around her or how much darker our lives are without her. She lives in some strange parallel world where she doesn't really matter, where she is easily forgotten and where the things that matter to her don't count for much. In her world, she isn't photogenic or pretty at all. In her world, no one really even notices that she's there except maybe to call her once in a while and complain about other, more important things going on in their lives. Her distance from the world that the rest of us live in causes her to hang out on the outside of things most of the time and she regrets that someday, there won't be any pictures with her actually in them, instead of behind the camera. If I had it in my power, I'd give her one gift...the ability to see herself through my eyes or any one's eyes other than her own. You see, she has no idea what she means to this world. If you know someone like her, please take the time today to let her know that she is beautiful and interesting and more than anything, that she is essential. I love you, Olivia.

too much and not enough...

As you may have noticed, we have been absent from the world of blogging for about three weeks. Those of you who know how much we procrastinate, are not surprised by this. However, life has truly been busy and for a potion of these three weeks, Jack has been on business travel. He is currently in Oklahoma working on an exercise which, for months before, he spent many long hours getting ready for. The exercise ends tomorrow, thankfully, and he will be home late tomorrow night. Hopefully, when he gets home and his schedule gets back to normal, he will have time to start posting again (hopefully with minimum nagging from me). Maybe he'll even take a much needed, well deserved vacation (even if we don't go anywhere) for a week or two.

While Jack has been on his forever long business trip to Oklahoma (OK, only 9 days now...but it seems longer) I have been fighting a losing battle in math class. I've also been busy being Madison's appointment keeper and chauffeur. She's been a popular girl this summer. Actually, both she and Jack have been popular..me, not so much! Just this morning Madison left for an eight day trip to Georgia with her Nana and Papa. She will be visiting her Aunt Melanie, Uncle Jimmy and cousins Lil' Jimmy and Mimi in Waycross,GA and then visiting her great grandparents in Savannah, GA. That is if she ever gets to leave Houston. They have been stuck in Houston, for about 6 hours now waiting on a flight out. Anyway, selfishly, I'll be glad when the traveling is done for both Jack and Madi. I'm tired of sharing them! There's been too much travel and not enough family time. So, by now you've figured out that Jack is not writing this post. Unfortunately the not-so-funny one in the family will be writing. Sorry to disappoint you, I know how much everyone looks forward to the funnies from Jack. I can't blame you, I look forward to them as well.

Here's a short run down of a few highlights over the last few weeks.

The weekend before Jack left for Oklahoma we managed to take a day for our family to do something besides business and school work. We took a trip with my sister, Virginia and nephew, Jason, to Inner Space Caverns in Georgetown, Texas. It's a pretty neat place with tons of history. Although we had to wait over an hour in the 104 degree heat for our tour to begin, we enjoyed our little outing. The tour was a guided under ground walking adventure which lasted about an hour and a half. The best part was that it was a constant 76 degrees under ground which allowed us to do our site seeing in natural air conditioning.

going down

At first glance, Madi thought there was a real

man under there.

Madi looks mad in this picture but, she had a good time, I think she was just a little tired at this point...or just ready to get to Dave and Busters, which is where we took the kids afterwards.

This is our kinda thing so, we really had a good time.

Then, the following weekend, Madi and I were fortunate enough to get to spend part of it with Jack in Oklahoma. We made the drive up on Friday and left Sunday by noon. What a nightmare drive it was there and back but, it was so worth it to spend time with him and see a new place.

This is what Madison did most of the drive...take pictures of herself or.... talk on the phone...mostly about bunnies. While in Oklahoma, we tortured ourselves yet again by picking an outdoor activity. We went to the Oklahoma City Zoo in the 106 degree heat. It was hot! A cold front came through the next day (the day we left) and the temperature only got to 88 degrees. Go figure.

The best part, a carousel ride on these guys...

and when Madi and I left Oklahoma, this is what Jack was doing...

working! Poor guy.

I haven't had many opportunities to take "pretty" pictures lately but, I do have one I wanted to share that I took a few weeks ago. I am proud of this one because it took many hours to get...

This dragonfly was with a group of dragonflies that were in our back yard feasting on little bugs for a few days. It seemed they would never land but, one day after standing in the back yard for a while, one finally landed and I was able to snap one picture of it before it flew away. I'm glad it turned out. I have a few picture of other things that I will share in the next post since this one is getting a little lengthy.

I want to thank all of you who have encouraged us to keep up with this blog. Hopefully, it will not be three weeks before our next post and hopefully you'll still be visiting it! To make up for the lack of humor in this post since Jack is not writing, I will leave you with this picture...hopefully it will make you laugh.....

A tomato from our garden...we called it (yes, called - it has long been eaten by now) Tomato Got Back. :)

Eastern tailed-blue

This little Eastern tailed-blue found me in the garden today. He fluttered right in front my face for a moment as if to get my attention and then landed on our Basil plant. My attention was his completely and he was not shy.

I ran into the house to get my camera, all the while thinking he would be gone by the time I got back to where he had been. But, he wasn't, he was waiting for me. It seemed to me he knew how badly I wanted to take his picture and he patently waited.

It took me a few minutes to get my camera ready but, he was in no rush and waited for me still as I attached my macro lens. When my camera was ready, I leaned in close and took his picture. I think he liked the attention because he stayed a long time with me, the lady with the camera.

Eastern tailed-blue

Wingspan: 1 inch

Markings: Wings are pail gray underneath with multiple black markings, plus orange spots near the tail. Hind wings have short "tails."

Source: gardening for birds and butterflies magazine.

Red White and Blue food, tomatos, celebrity worship, and coffee mugs

Just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about our wonderful and way too short 4th of July weekend. We had a great time all weekend with our families and enjoyed way too many great meals, Olivia's parents swimming pool, and a few fireworks (thanks a lot burn ban). More importantly though, it was a really nice chance to unwind with people that we love and, of course, a chance to eat Red, White and Blue desserts...

YUMMO! Our garden celebrated the occasion with a few "fireworks" of its own and we are proud to announce that my terrorized tomato plants have begun producing at last.

We have already added them to a number of our family's meals and pick at least a handful, daily. Olivia and I are looking forward to putting them to good use along with our Serrano and jalapeno peppers in some salsa. Spicy! Madison thinks that it is pretty cool to be able to pick tomatoes and peppers in our yard but, this doesn't come close to convincing her that they are remotely good to eat.

We have had a heat wave here for the past couple of weeks. Imagine that, hot weather in Texas in July. We really need to get a soaker hose for the garden because things have begun to really look wilty in between watering's. I heard the other day that if you try to water plants and vegetables by hand with a regular garden hose, you can spend hours and then dig up the soil in the area that you watered and find that the water has only penetrated like 1/2 inch. That doesn't sound like it would get down deep to those roots does it? Plus this watering technique wastes a lot of money. Not a good idea in this economy but I guess maybe if I blame the weather on the Bush administration, someone will swoop in and bail me out of this recession of soaring temperatures! While I'm on a serious soapbox, I guess I have to talk about the whole Michael Jackson thing now. For me, it is a little surprising that there is so much tension about the whole thing. It is, more than anything, a sad commentary on the level of celebrity worship and resentment that exists in our society. Maybe its a race thing too but, I tell ya, maybe we should all take some time to turn off the t.v., read a book, and worry about something else like, who's using your kids profile photos from facebook for some online singles website. Sometimes, this can be a really interesting world, we live in. Maybe the "he changed the world" guys, and the "he was a perverted freak-show" guys, and Bubbles the chimp and I should all worry more about whether or not we remembered to put our coffee cup in the sink this morning before we left for work? Well maybe not Bubbles, he probably shouldn't be drinking coffee.

We'll end with a few of the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of pictures of pretty things that Olivia took over the weekend. These are a few favorites....

Happy Birthday Betty Bunny

Today marks a big day for our family. Whether we call you Cami, Camille, or Mom, you mean so much to each of us. You are a kind voice and a prayer when we really need it, a friend to talk about anything with, a great example, and a loving and caring mom, mother-in-law and grandmother. For me, you've also been the first voice I've heard for soo many birthday's, singing me your silly "Birthday Bunny" song. Well today you are the Birthday Bunny, and Betty, we hope you have a great one. We love you!