:)

I thank God for these two amazing goobers every day. Only, I don't usually word it like that when I do...

Slither

Cole actually has a pretty fast slither. He's not a hands and knees crawler. He zips around the house looking like a gecko. He'll stop, get up on his hands and feet in the yoga Downward Dog position, get to his knees in the regular crawl position, scout the area, then drop to his tummy and slither to his goal. I think I could figure out a mop outfit to put on him so that he can get that chore out of the way for me when he is moving around on the wood floor. Here he is about a week ago, happy he was able to take off with one of his sister's toys:

Wii love it!

The Netflix-Wii partnership is brilliant. I thought Redbox was awesome, and then along came this little merger. I was too cheap to go for Netflix on the mailing system alone, but once the option to stream movies straight through your Wii came along, I gave in to the man (my husband).

Our options for kids-are-asleep movie nights have opened up. We can watch new movies, older movies that we have wanted to watch either because we are fond of them or we just haven't seen them before, or movies that are a little less commercial that we've heard good things about. Veggie Tales have turned into my favorite hey-watch-this-Tessa choice while I make Sunday dinners. We can turn a movie off if it isn't what we hoped it would be and we aren't out anything. There are no time restraints on finishing a movie. If I ever get the inkling, I can watch an actual episode of Lost. AND, we get to see documentaries that we never would have otherwise gotten our hands on.

I love a good documentary --the key word being "good". Jake and I have recently watched one on the Dark Ages (romantic as ever) and one on break dancing. But one has had me mulling about what was presented for a few days now. It's this one:

Now, I try to be objective when I'm watching documentaries because I know that they are often meant to get you to lean in a certain direction of thought. I went to a workshop once about how to critically watch a documentary, and because of what I learned there, I try to step back and notice the music, lighting, how the facts are presented, etc. if the documentary subject has a high emotional or political flavor to it. With that said, I figured that this documentary would be at least as conservative as I am, but I wanted to make sure that I paid attention to the other side of the argument and didn't get swept away in "Yeah! You tell 'em, Mr. Stein!"

If you haven't seen this movie or know what it's about, it deals with the taboo subject of intelligent design in the science world. It discusses the danger of teaching Darwinism without the freedom of teaching Intelligent Design in schools -and the scientific validity of latter having just as much (if not more) validity than the former. I was fascinated with the explanations of holes in Darwinistic theory on one side and the brutal attack on Intelligent Design on the other (which most of us have witnessed in the real world). The movie starts with images of the Berlin Wall going up and really encompasses the massive importance of freedom of thought and freedom of the exchange of ideas.

Okay, I'm finding myself wanting to go on and on about it, but I think it's best that you just watch it if you get the opportunity. Then, let's chat. I still believe what I believe with my whole heart, but another facet has been added to strengthen it, and it's strangely scientific.

Admirers

Do any of you fellow (public) bloggers have any Chinese admirers? I sure do. For the last five or so blog posts, I've gotten a comment in Chinese. These comments have a link put in them, also in Chinese. I haven't clicked. I don't read Chinese. I've got a hunch they have nothing to do with me. I delete them as soon as I can. I'm sure it's something harmless like a fantastic deal on electronics, but it could be something else.....and I'm just not willing to find out. I thought about printing them out and giving them to a girl I teach in Young Women who takes Chinese at school to have her teacher translate. But then I thought better of it. There's a chance my Chinese admirers/spammers aren't rated PG.

So here's a question I'm throwing out there: How do I stop the spamming commenter? I have the word verification for comments already. Do I just suck it up and delete the comment when it invariably shows up? Anybody else have this issue? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Dress Shop

My shop assistants helped me get a dress and accessory shop set up in my bedroom. Julie made sure everything was in order, and Cole spit shined the jewelry....

Although I didn't take a picture of our fancy displays, I got a picture of what was most important -- these shopping crazed ladies:
Money was obviously no object.

Fun in Mesquite

Jake's parents came to visit, and, as always, we had a great time with them. We bought tickets to take them to the rodeo and concert festival in Mesquite one night. Besides music, there was a small car show, carnival rides patooey!, and Texas vendors. The car show had quite the assortment of vehicles (I still have a hard time thinking about cars made in the 1980's as "vintage"). Among all the classic cars, they had a brand new Chevy Traverse out. I promptly got inside and dreamed about owning it.
Here's proof we were there:

Bubs got a new hat. I wasn't really going for the chin strap in the beginning, but then I realized the benefits of him not taking off the hat and dropping it wherever we go. Chin strap it is. Here he is showing it off......like a Glamour Shot photo minus the foofy hair.

Okay, this was cool. This vehicle is a 1903 Oldsmobile. As I was admiring it from behind the rope, Tessa asked if she could go sit in it. I explained how it wasn't ours to touch as the owner came strolling up with his nachos. He was a sweet old man who told us that the car had been passed down in the family since it was new. Awesome. After explaining some of the work he has had to do on it, he offered to let Tessa sit in it so I could take a picture. Woot! Tessa got to sit in a car that is over a century old. I have no clue why the owner felt the need to go grab a polar bear wearing Mardi Gras beads to be in the picture with her, but I wasn't going to question it. He was being mighty generous.

Convertible! This baby can get up to 23 miles an hour.

We had dinner soon after from a BBQ stand. I'm pretty sure that was the healthiest thing there. I heard mention of fried Nutter Butters, but I resisted.

Jake insisted that Tessa get to go on one of the rides and reminded me that just because I think carnival rides are the nastiest piles on the planet, that it doesn't mean my kids do. Good point, Hub. She was very excited to ride on the Carousel, just like Mary Poppins.

We made our way to the Resistol Arena for the rodeo:

I will be visiting this place again someday. I love rodeos. We had to leave after about 2/3 of the rodeo since the kids were already up way past their bedtime and showing it, but we still had a good time with what we were able to see.

I think I need cowgirl boots.

What's a girl got to do....

...to get a decent picture around here?

I got snapshot after snapshot of, "WHAT are you doing to me?!?!" faces. I'm sure I'll get plenty more of those in the future.

I didn't think it was too much to ask to get both siblings smiling at the camera, but apparently it was. I just had to laugh.


Jake's parents had never seen the blue bonnets, though, so score on that part!