The Mystery Photo - Answer

That mystery photo was way too easy! I'm just getting you warmed up. :o) Here's the same elephant eye, open this time.

An Elephant and a Camel go into a bar...

Sunday I took my boys to one of those roadside, traveling carnivals. Someone gave us a coupon for a free ticket, so we decided to go check it out. It was a Barnum and Bailey knock off, a Ringling Brothers cheap imitation, but we still had fun.

The minute we walk up to the tents, my boys see something they want...can you guess?

They want the alien. So, that's a picture of the Alien I did NOT buy.

This is a picture of the snow cone I did end up buying, because the tent was so hot we were sweating on top of our sweat.

The high point of the visit was riding the animals available. First up was the camel ride...

Then the elephant ride! Too cool. My boys are in the middle, don't know who all the other people are...

Now, the elephant can sense that I'm looking for good blog material, so it gives me a pose...

Saggy, elephant butt, can't go wrong with that! My boys were on the elephant at the time it did this, and they said they ended up leaning to one side as the elephant shifted its weight. It was a little scary for them, the (big wusses) little darlings. Just kidding!

Now we need a picture of camel butt...

Here's what it looked like in the sweltering hot big top:

As I tried to ignore the flashing subliminal messages they sent to tempt me into eating something bad...

Then the scary clowns arrived...

and they had women doing this...

and poodles that did this (I bet I could teach Annie to do some tricks like this with my kids...)

then the crazy hula hoop woman went all hula hoopy on us...

and finally, we escaped out of the hot tent back to the animals outside.

This llama was chillin' (look at what's in his mouth!)

and this llamabelow needs to visit an orthodontist!!

And, finally, we saw lots of this...

Fun at the circus today!!

What's this a picture of?

Is it obvious? I don't know...give me your best guesses!!

Dogma

I found Annie fast asleep on her bed in the den last night...along with my husband and two boys all sleep on the couch in the same room, basketball blaring on the TV. Only my elderly father was still awake. I couldn't resist a few pictures of the sleeping dog, husband and kids, but denied permission to post the pictures except of Annie...

She has such a wonderful, simple life. We adopted her from DFW Lab Rescue this summer, and she came with her name. She's two or three years old. She's fed, loved, sleeps with my boys, gets lots of love and car rides. What a wonderful life!

She does have some weird habits. She licks, constantly, herself and others. Then there's the butt scootch. I'll try to capture that on camera someday. It's hilarious. She keeps getting ear infections, more than my kids ever had, apparently that's a lab thing.

Donny, my eleven year old, woke up this morning to her barfing on his bed.

We love you, Annie!!

Coming later today, possible post on a past Mexico trip and/or our experience at the scary roadside circus excursion planned for today!

Introducing Miss Thing, The Monkey & Sweet Cheeks

Last weekend, we had some family visitors! My sister K and her adorable girls came to visit. (K's husband, Flyboy, was off flying. We missed you Flyboy!) So, I'd like to introduce my beautiful nieces...first, here is Miss Thing. She just turned 10!

Oops, I didn't mean for this picture to slip in...not sure how to delete one picture from the post...

Next, we have The Monkey, who is 8 years old...

and, finally, Sweet Cheeks, who is four.

We decided to take a walk to our neighborhood creek. Here, Sweet Cheeks is trying to control Annie, who is overcome with a love for nature and trying to sniff everything...I don't think Sweet Cheeks has the muscle to win this one...

And, of course, kids being kids, they can't resist the creek. My son Donny manages to talk his pretty little cousins into walking over near the mud...and before you know it, Miss Thing has fallen on her butt in the mud. I don't think she gets dirty often...check out the look of dismay on her face...

The Monkey is not far behind...she embraces her dirty side with less screaming than Miss Thing, but you can tell they both don't get this dirty often...my children have such a great effect on other kids, don't they? Sorry, K and Flyboy! The Monkey's facial expressions are so worth capturing on film...enjoy:

Sweet Cheeks stays far away from her sisters and watches with amusement. She isn't getting muddy today.

Oh, The Monkey is loving it, you know it, despite those dramatic faces...

Here go Miss Thing, The Monkey and Donny farther down the creek...

And, of course, Annie the lab can't take it anymore, she has to join them.

Look at Sweet Cheeks, miraculously mud-free. Isn't she adorable? You see where she gets her nickname.

Ok, I think The Monkey has had enough mud time. She isn't looking so happy anymore.

Miss Thing always has a pose for the camera though, even covered in mud. Cutie.

Annie has had a blast. Wet dog though, that doesn't have me smiling anymore...think she dried off on the walk home? No, of course not...

The Importance of being Unimportant

I found out today that one of my brother-in-laws, (one of my five sisters' husbands) got to be at the New York Stock Exchange and help ring the opening bell. Very cool! What an important thing to get to do! One of those things I certainly will never get to cross off my To Do list. Way to go, Q!


Another of my brother-in-laws (another sister's husband) is on Easter Island this week or last week. What an important place to visit! I mean, who can say they've been to Easter Island? For those of you who don't know, Easter Island is rather mysterious, in the middle of freaking nowhere (way west of Chile in the middle of the Pacific Ocean) and has the awesome ancient statues sculped out of volcanic rock all over the island. Way too cool, M!

I'm pretty jealous...although I did hear there was some kind of insect infestation, which produces nightmaric images in my mind.


You know where I went yesterday? Not New York, the stock exchange or Easter Island. I went to the Dr's office, where I was made to feel very unimportant. I spent most my time in the exam room looking at this wall...

Which led me to start wondering if I had any of these diseases or disorders displayed so prolifically. I'm a bit of a hyperchondriac...I often end up on WebMD, researching esoteric diseases I'm convinced I have. Don't get me started.


I also went to baseball practice yesterday. Not a super important task to most people, but super important to me and the two young men pictured below. See Remy, my six year old left-handed, pinch hitter and Donny, my bored looking 11 year old carrying a lethal stick that doubled as a baseball bat during his little brother's practice...

Donny has a weird hat choice with his UT Longhorn jersey...

I've taken to carrying my camera everywhere, for blog material, and when I explain this to Donny, my eleven year old, he gives me this look...

So, feeling slightly unimportant after hearing about what my brothers-in-law are up to, I find the need to get therapy with shopping...some new shoes...

By the way, is it bad to feed the dog lasagna?

What's Cooking in this Pot - Answer

About a week ago, I posed this question: What's cooking in this pot? Some people guessed fudge, or pralines or peanut brittle. Jeff B came the closet with his astute observation that I was carmelizing sugar. My cousin Jana knows the answer, but she kept quiet...

The answer is Caramel Cake. It's a recipe that has been in our family for around 100 years, supposedly. Pictured below is an example of caramel cake, although mine never looks that neat and profession and never has that many layers. (I usually only do two layers.) It is the BEST cake I have ever eaten in my life. It is very hard to cook correctly, and I never get it perfect. My grandmother is the pro, she makes and sells them, and we've all been sworn to never share the recipe.

Thanks for all your guesses! I'll try to come up with another mystery photo soon.

Speaking car

You never really learn to swear until you have to fix a car.

As you know, my car was broken for FOUR months, my husband The Barrister fixed it, I had it back for 24 hours, and then it broke again. I had thrown some clothes on to take the kids to school, stopped real quick at the grocery store and then the car wouldn't start back up again! So, I grabbed my groceries and my dog (who likes to ride in the car when I take the boys to school) and walked home. Luckily I don't live too far from the grocery store.

I then proceed to call The Barrister and my mother...no, I wasn't crying but I was very frustrated. The Barrister was in court in Dallas, so he couldn't help. My mom drove right over. We got the car to start again and brought it home. Then we figured out the problem was with the alternator, through a quick diagnostic test my stepfather talked us through on the cell phone. See exhibit A below, my mom on the phone with my stepfather:

The next picture shows my car's guts. Lovely, old, dirty insides that keep breaking.

Here is my mom performing the diagnostic test, where we hooked up jumper cables between our cars, then my mom had to undo a bolt...and the car promptly died, therefore identifying the most likely suspect as the alternator. She is removing the bolt below:

See this pretty, colorful little information sticker on the battery where my mom was removing the bolt? I don't know about you, but all I could focus on where the words "danger" and "poison" and my favorite, "explosive." Now you see why I was taking the pictures...

This sticker also caught my eye. Not sure what it was trying to warn me of...or maybe it was in a different language...see why I'm taking pictures with my zoom lense and backing away from the car?

So, I get a little distracted at this point. Look at the pretty red bird in the tree next to my driveway? Pretty bird...

Oh, and look at the park across the street! Look at ALL those birds in that tree. A little freaky. I had no idea so many birds hung out there.

Oh, I guess I need to help my mom as she busts her knuckles on the guts of my car and handles explosive, very dangerous insides. Look, this is the alternator, which converts power from a gas engine to electrical energy for the battery. Pretty important little doodad. It took us a while, but together (ok, my mom did more work than I did, but I did climb up and help!) we got it out!!

And, this is the pretty, shiny NEW alternator we got at Autozone, where they were very helpful. I think they might have been laughing at us as we shared the story of how we removed the ugly alternator next to the dangerous stickers and busted our poor knuckles...Oh, and I somehow managed to touch one cable to a metal thingy and shoot sparks everywhere...not sure what I did but I backed away again at this point and started taking more pictures. :o) I'm so helpful!

The moral of this story is: Women CAN do car things (with a little guidance) but we would prefer the men do them, because it's awfully messy work, and I still can't get the word "explosive" out of my mind...I just don't speak car very well.

DISCLAIMER: This story is told tongue-in-cheek. Seriously. Where else would my tongue be?

This post is not complete without the requisite car joke:

Four Engineers and a Broken Car

There are four engineers travelling in a car; a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an electrical engineer and a computer engineer. The car breaks down. "Sounds to me as if the pistons have seized. We'll have to strip down the engine before we can get the car working again", says the mechanical engineer. "Well", says the chemical engineer, "it sounded to me as if the fuel might be contaminated. I think we should clear out the fuel system." "I thought it might be an grounding problem", says the electrical engineer, "or maybe a faulty plug lead." They all turn to the computer engineer who has said nothing and say: "Well, what do you think?" "Ummm - perhaps if we all get out of the car and get back in again?"