We made it!

What Sydney and I made yesterday while she was home sick! And then we ate it! Yummy! *ribbit!*

Nice VS Mean

Friday morning, L and I went to Borders book store to purchase a guide book and a road atlas for our trip to Santa Cruz. Only two people with a direction sense of our caliber would need multiple books and maps to visit a place an hour and a half away, but such is our level of preparedness. Or something. ;)

Books — and the latest issue of Elle — in tow, we squoze into the car between our tents and sleeping bags, and headed through the parking lot. At the edge of the lot, where it T's into the road, was an elderly man, standing and staring.

"What's that guy doing?" asked L.

"I think he might be homeless and/or crazy," I replied. And either because, or in spite of me thinking he was homeless and/or crazy, I made eye contact and waved.

The little old man started to walk toward me. He was tiny. Each frail little step took a while, shuffling his tweed trousers and matching suit jacket over a button-down shirt my way, bit by bit. I rolled the window down.

"Are you going to Safeway?" he asked. "That's where I meant to go, but we got mixed up."

"The one in Strawberry Village? No, I'm actually going the other way."

"Okay," he said, stepping back from the car.

"Sorry..."

He shuffled back to the sidewalk, to obviously wait for someone else to flag down. Someone else to give the poor old man a ride.

In Marin? Yeah, right. It was going to be a long wait.

I got out of the car and approached him. "Sir? I can give you a ride, it's not far."

"Are you sure?"

"Totally."

"It's not the Safeway in Strawberry, it's... it's the one..."

**HONK HONK!**

I looked up to see a stereotypical 'bored Marin housewife' in a shiny new SUV, bearing down on us, angrily desperate to enter the parking lot RIGHT NOW and at THIS VERY ENTRANCE. I pointed down the road, where, 100 yards further, was another entrance. She made wild hand gestures and angry glares, but I ignored her and turned back to the old man.

"It's the one... over by..."

"Oh! I know which one you mean! It's totally on the way. Hop in." I opened the door for him and started to escort him into my car.

**HONK HONK!!** More wild hand gestures.

"Go around!" I mouthed at the impatient lady behind the wheel. I was relatively sure that the books she wanted to buy would still be there, regardless of which entrance she used, but she seemed just as sure that they'd sprout wings and fly off to hell at any second. With the final gestures of her visible tantrum, she hit the gas and floored it to the next entrance.

The little old man slid in, and I drove him to Safeway. He thanked me gratefully, and off we all went. L and I got back on the main road to the freeway, and she said to me, "Wow, you're nice. I never would have picked him up."

Sometimes I start to lose my faith in humanity. Sometimes it seems like people would rather pay someone — a trendy non-profit, a government, a church — to be charitable or neighborly FOR them, instead of just being charitable and neighborly themselves. They don't want to get their hands dirty. They don't want their shopping routine disrupted.

L and I got to Santa Cruz maybe 5 minutes later than we would have.

Guess what I cooked yesterday.

Wild Turkey

Wild turkeys just off my patio deck this morning...

More fun with bad lyrics...

(Sung to the tune of "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music)

Let's start at the very beginning
The very best place to start
When you read you begin with A, B, C
When you add you begin with 1, 2, 3
(1, 2, 3)
1, 2, 3
The first three Natural Numbers just happen to be
1, 2, 3
mc^2 must equal E...

Null, a set, an empty set
Ray, direction on a plane
Mean, the sum above the count
Prime is just one and the same
Slope, the tangent to an arc
Cord, a convex test for slope
Force, derivative of Work
And that will bring us back to Null

Dinosaur Park!

Sydney loves dinosaurs! We went to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden last weekend. It was so fun to see her run around to each dinosaur and tell us what each one was. "There's a Maisaurus! And look, there's a Truadon Dinosaur, they eat Maisaurus eggs!" She's so cute! Here are some pictures of our outing.

We also got to play in the yard the week before, here are the pictures from that too!

Peyton looks so thrilled to get his picture taken.

Smartie-pants!

So my daughter is brilliant! She is starting to read! She sounds out the words and it is so cute! If you ask her what a word starts with she can tell you, any word, try it! We also went outside Sunday and looked at the daffodils and tulips that are going to bloom soon. And then we played some basketball. Sydney is learning to dribble, the shooting takes a bit more, but she's going to be awsome! However, the ball bounced into her face a few times, she laughed quite a bit, but decided that she was going to shy away from it instead of catching it. So if we can just get her over being afraid of the ball, she'll be unstoppable! Peyton sat and watched for a little bit and then I held him and played "P-I-G" against Jason and beat him! Yes, while holding my 19 pound blue boy!

Sydney made me a cake for my birthday, it was fun to make it with her and have her decorate it. She would put one candy decoration on the cake and one in her mouth :).

Peyton is getting bigger every day. He gains about a pound a week, literally!

If you have forgotten what Sydney looked like at this age, just take a look at Peyton! Peyton is really coming into himself these days, but it's amazing how much the two look like each other. Here are a couple pictures of them at about the same age.

Hope you all are having as much fun as us! :)