Happiness!!!

Yesterday was our big ultrasound. We have a little face picture, but it is not the best quality, so I won't put it here. It looks a little like a spook, and I'm not having a ghost-baby. We went to a specialist, he was very nice, and he assured us that this is a very healthy baby, right on target for everything, and weighing 8 oz. which is the perfect weight for 18 weeks. Praise God! He is so good to us! I'm glad that it is not already too big, but don't worry, it'll get there.

So you might be wondering if we were able to find out if we are going to have a girl baby or a boy baby. Alright, I'll tell you....






IT'S













A


















BOY!

Woohoo! A new brother!!!! And Peanut is very happy. She decided at the last minute that she didn't really care, after hoping for a girl for so long. I told her that makes her the one and only Princess, so that's a good thing.

We had a party for Junior on Saturday. He had a great time. Here is a picture of his cake. He had a "Cash Cab" cake in honor of his favorite show

Afterwards, Dad and the two grandpas worked on the backyard playhouse. It looks great.

Congratulations Todd!

Todd just got his Ham Radio License! Woo hoo! He studied hard, took the test, and made a 100% on it. That was a couple of weeks ago, and they just gave him his license last week. His station is KE5IRG.

Way to go, Todd!!

Baby birds

We have baby birds in our backyard birdhouse again this year. This time has been better, as they are sparrows and no other birds have decided to mess with them.

There was some worry on Saturday as the mama and daddy did not show up for a long time, and we wondered if something had happened to them. The babies were still alive when we got home from church Sunday, so I thought that was a good sign. I sat at the kitchen table for a long time Sunday, and in about an hour and a half, the mama came back for like 5 seconds, but I guess that is long enough to feed baby birds. You know, I try not to pass judgement on other parents who are hopefully doing their best, but still...

But on Monday, the mama and daddy both were very busy coming by to feed them just every few minutes, and yesterday was much the same. The babies are much louder now. You can hear them all over the yard, they are very cute. Peanut has figured out how to hush them, I didn't know you could do that. She just makes a long "shush" sound and they hush right up.

There are at least three and maybe even four, it's hard to tell. I tried to get a picture, but it is impossible, the little camera can't get it.

The picture is from All Posters

Our new car game

Junior has found a new favorite show, Cash Cab. He really gets into it. The "three strikes and you're out" rule is very interesting to him. He acts really worried when someone gets a strike, "Oh, no! If they get three strikes I'm gonna cry!" But I think he really is living for that moment. And not that many people get kicked out, but it's just enough to hold his interest.

So today we had to play it in the car. I'm the driver, but we turn the tables so that I'm actually the contestant and he is the host. Let me tell you, his game is much more challenging than the one on TV. Today it went like this:

Junior: Ok, Who built China?
Mama: Ummm...ah...The ancient Chinese?
Junior: No, that is incorrect! The correct answer is: China Guy!
Mama: Okay, wow, that was a hard one.
Junior: You have One Strike!
Mama: Alright, one strike.
Junior: Next question: Who invented numbers?
Mama: Umm....Arabic...Guy?
Junior: That is correct! You got it RIGHT!!!
Mama: Oh, good.

But he is very fair. He wouldn't let Peanut count an answer wrong because I got it right, just not the thing she was thinking of. Even though she insisted that I needed to be able to tell what she was thinking, that was the rule.

See what I mean? It is a hard, hard, game.

Mothers' Day

I had a very nice Mothers' Day. The kids both gave me cute cards and Todd fixed lunch for me. I didn't have to lift a finger!! He even cleaned up. Wow! Oh, and Peanut made me a craft, which is very nice. It is a pretty sand art bottle. I'll try to take a picture tomorrow.

The kids even went to bed early! That doesn't happen too often. I got to listen to Riverwalk Jazz, I finished up our homeschool yearbook pages, and now I'm just waiting for my BritComs to come on TV.

Here is a very nice article I read this week, called The Pursuit of Happiness. It is a bit long, but really good. And I just love the picture she has of the seashell candles. We went to Hobby Lobby this week and they were selling bowls of seashells. I was so tempted to get some and try to make those candles, then I thought better of it. I don't know how to make candles, and I have enough projects backed up because of my lack of energy the past couple of months.

Hee hee! Lookie what I got today!

I wasn't even hoping for such luck, but it so happened that today the doctor could not find a heartbeat with her fancy Doppler thing. I think it is just too early, but I guess they also don't want to take any chances since I will not be back for 4 weeks. So they sent me down the hall to get an ultrasound!

Here is the best picture they gave me. It is still not as clear as it looked on the screen.


They found a heartbeat just fine with the ultrasound, and the baby was wiggling and squirming a lot. Very cute. I should say, the child's nose did not really look as long as it does in the picture! Both kids got to see it. Peanut was quite overjoyed. I am not sure how much Junior understood about it. He did not have too much to say, but he did like the ultrasound equipment. It looked like an elaborate video game.
That is all for tonight, because I'm tired. I am uploading some pictures of the kids and I will try to put them on here tomorrow.

A Sad Day

Today is such a sad day for me and all the other fans of "The Andy Griffith Show." On the front page of my Sunday paper are the words, "Barney Dies." That is so far from the truth, though. Barney will never die. Don Knotts was the talent that brought him to life, but Barney will live forever. He was truly the best television character ever. It is really sad to watch the TV stars of today even try to live up to the standard set by people like Don Knotts (not to mention the beloved Lucille Ball.) The writers do not have the heart and soul for it, and the actors don't have the understanding. They are reduced to stupid insults and sex jokes that only cause the kind of uncomfortable laughter brought on by embarrassment.

I am just grateful that my family and I can still share a little bit of what was Mayberry. A huge part of that was the talent of Don Knotts.

Mayberry.com

In my mailbox this week...

I finally got the COOL thing I ordered a while back. It is a DVD set of "The Electric Company" episodes. I really don't know why this is so entertaining to me, but it is hilarious. Now it seems very low-tech and corny, but I'm sure they were as well-done as they could be back then. It was still PBS and all. You can see clips of it here You have to click "Audio and Video Clips." I guess you would had to have watched it back then to appreciate it. My kids are young enough that they find it very interesting. They really like the "Silent E" song. It starts out: "Who can turn a "can" into a "cane?" I think Peanut just likes it for the music, but Junior is fascinated by the fact that there is a letter that doesn't make a sound.

Scott, you need to get one of these!

Todd doesn't remember this show. At all. I don't know what the deal is! I think he watched plenty of TV as a kid, I guess not daytime TV. He was probably listening to the radio. Whenever we hear a song from way back in the early seventies, he'll say, "Remember when this song came out?" No, hon, I don't remember when "An Old Fashioned Love Song" came out. How can you remember '71 or '72? He probably was listening, though.

Going through my pantry

Today I got I burst of energy (or maybe it was insanity!) Or both. First, I just meant to go through our medicines because I knew some of them were probably expired. That went well, so I decided to go through my spices. I have heard that you can keep spices for a very long time, but I think they do lose some of their flavor. Anyway, I got on the Internet and tried to find out how long you are really supposed to keep them. McCormick's website says 3 to 4 years for whole spices and 2 to 3 years for ground spices. Then the question is, "How do you know how old they are?" They don't have a date on the bottle. But McCormick has a decoder on their webpage that you can type the code from the bottom of the bottle and it will tell you the date it was packaged. Pretty cool. I noticed that the newer bottles actually have an expiration date on them.

The weird thing is that they have a little blurb on there where they say if a bottle says "Baltimore, MD" on it, it is over 15 years old. Well, I had one of those bottles. But here's the thing: I remember buying it, and it was not 15 years ago! It could have been 8 years, maybe. But think of how long it must have sat on the store shelf! The little decoder gave me the date of 1981, but I know that can't be true, because the label says "Copyright 1985." But still!