Burp...!

Look how our little Jaylin has grown so big. Everytime I see her (which thanks to her mommy and daddy is often!) I think she is prettier and smarter. Grandpapa Jon says that he loves to hear her laugh when he calls down to North Carolina. She loves to eat ... just like the little great grandpigglet she is and her mommy loves to sing her songs while she takes her bath. Jaylin loves water and even though she is too little to say Merry Christmas she allready knows this is her favorite time of year because her mommy has been singing her Christmas songs filled with happiness since December 1st ... we can't wait to see you on your first Christmas day little one.

Gingerbread Cookin'

Katie, Emma, Chas and I had a fabulous night of making gingerbread men, women and even a special gingerbread animal. A wise friend told me today that I didn't have to make gingerbread from scratch to be a good mom so I bought the pre-made refrigerated stuff instead. Thank Heavens for good friends and Pillsbury! It was awesome! We had so much fun and I'm actually still sane.

While I was going through my millions of cookie cutters(how did I get so many anyway?), I found a huge pig-shaped cookie cutter. I have no idea where it and it's other freaky barnyard cookie cutter friends came from, maybe Ma pig gave them to me since she has a weakness for such things; right LaRee? Anyway, I made a huge Gingerbread Pig especially for all of you!

Merry Christmas!

Just as a side note; after I took the pictures of the kids pretending to eat their gingergread cookies, they all said "blog?" at the exactly the same time. HA!

We can't find the original picture so the quality of this shot isn't that great but here is Janelle, DeOn, Debby, Lila and LaRee modeling their new "Grandma Larsen" pajamas. (1966)

Simply medieval

After a debacle of a 'fancy christmas party' (suffice it to say it took two hours to drive and find a parking place in downtown atlanta) last year Oldcastle decided to do something more simple this year. We ended up going to Medieval Times and it was a hoot. The food was fair but the show was a lot of fun to watch. There were no utinsels with dinner so we ate everything with our hands. They put on quite a show. The horsemanship was really amazing. Crystal knows much more about horses than I do and she pointed out all the things the knights were doing on horseback. They also had a falcon in the show that swooped a few feet over our heads during the performance. The jousting was also cool to see as well as the staged sword fights. We both wondered how they put the show on without getting someone seriously hurt with all the flips, jumps and swords they fling around. Anyhow it was a lot of fun, a short drive from home and we didn't have to pay a sitter a ton of money. All good things!

As a side note I did not take this picture. I learned from Charlie that sometimes it is just better to pirate a picture and throw it on the blog! :) I grabbed this from the Medieval Times website.

Sean Taylor

It's been almost 2 weeks since the tragic death of the great Redskin saftey Sean Taylor. He was a hard player played in health and injury if he could. You could till by the way he played ball that he loved the sport of football; so this is a video i made in a tribute to the young hardest hitter in the National Football Leauge. R.I.P Sean Taylor 1983-2007

Good bye Maine

It is a sad thing to leave a place you love even if you know that you don't want to stay there forever. I knew that the moment would come where I would drive off the island for the last time, drive over the Penobscot River and past Bangor for the last time, and drive over the Piscataca River and out of Maine for the last time but it is still hard when the moment comes. On my last day of work I took a long lunch break and went out to the little portion of Acadia that is open when there is snow. I feel lucky to have seen Maine in all of its seasons and to have snow just before I left was the best gift of all ... the see the rock bound coast of Maine dressed in its traditional coat of snow!

Caddilac Mountain

The loop road

The Beehive

View of ocean through trees

Otter Cliffs

The Beehive

Schoodic Peninsula

Eyes in the back of my head

Our van has a cool little conversation mirror that we can use to talk back and for to whoever is in the backseat while we are driving. We were driving back from the mall after trying to see Santa and I looked back and saw this funny scene. I really missed the picture though because two seconds before this Chas had his shirt pulled up over his head because it was smoky where we were at and the back windows in the van were down. Don't worry Mom. I wasn't looking through the viewfinder when I took this picture. I had my camera out of its bag at the time and I just grabbed it and snapped off a shot.

Katie's Flower

Katie's primary teacher gave her an amaryllis bulb about a month ago and told them if they took care of the plant it would bloom by Christams. (Charlie will appreciate the formal name. To me it is a bulb) Well sure enough Katie was a good gardner and look at the results! She has been very diligent about watering the bulb, rotating the plant so the flower grew somewhat straight and we now have a beautiful flower. It looks like we will get three of four blossoms out of the deal and they are quite beautiful. The other kids have been very excited to see it grow as well. As you can see in the picture the plant is nearly 3 feet tall!

Arches and Juniper Berries

I just blogged on Marley Acers about our trip to Moab. I've never been there this time of year before and was amazed by the natural desert world getting ready for winter. One thing in particular caught my eye: The Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) in all it's fall glory.

"The Utah juniper is the classic desert tree. Its twisting, often-dead branches seem to epitomize the struggle of life with little water. When moisture is scarce, a juniper will actually stop the flow of fluids to some outer branches so that the tree has a better chance for survival. Scale-covered leaves and bluish, waxy-coated seeds help the tree conserve moisture."

The "berries" are what caught my eye, they absolutely COVER the trees in fall giving them an otherworldly appearance in the stark landscape. We stopped to look close up at the berries. I went on to learn that in botanical terms the the Utah Juniper is "a monoecious conifer".



"Conifer" means the "berries" are actually cones (like pine cones) but covered with a waxy flesh to protect the seeds from the heat.
"Monoecious" means that both sexes are on the same plant, meaning each individual tree is capable of surviving and reproducing alone, even if every other Utah Juniper in the world were to die! The craziest thing about that is that around 10% of plants have evolved to become dioecious, producing cones of only one sex.

Fascinating.

Part 1 Bar Island

The other day I took a lunch time trip out to Bar Island and recorded some cell phone footage of the trip. The video quality isn't great but I hope that you enjoy it all the same.

Part 2

The sand bar is covered by 10-11 feet of water at high tide!