New Camera

They always say 3rd time's a charm, hopefully we've found the camera we'll keep for a while.

If you'll recall back before Eli was born we purchased a Sony camera. Loved it, still love it, other than the fact that it seems to have gotten zapped by a power surge 4 days before Emily was due to arrive.

So, we went into panic mode and found what we thought was going to be a great camera from Canon. As the blog at that time mentioned, we weren't so sure. Now that the lens cap requires tapping when you fire it up to open, we're convinced we don't like it (took us upwards of 3000 pictures to determine that for sure :) ).

Anyway, we're now the proud owners of a Sony DSC-H7. From what we can tell it's a pretty nice camera. To paraphrase Steve from Steve's Digicams "The features of a dSLR w/out the cost".

We'll have some new pictures to show off in the next couple of days.

Kids and Birthday

Alicia's birthday was today. Eli and I baked a chocolate cake from a library book yesterday. Man, is it chocolaty. (8 oz of semi-sweet baker's chocolate + 3/4 cup of cocoa). I did leave out the buttermilk powder that I searched high and low in Kroger to get but it was pretty yummy. Emily loved it.




The kids and I went shopping while Alicia was off tutoring. We got her a hand mixer (she requested it) and a pair of slippers.




Here's some random pics from the last couple of weeks.

Emily loves hairbows


Mail-lady Emily


Eli, that's not how you get in and out of the house


Here's the door, use this


Ring around a rosie....


Painting is fun


Let's build a windmill. You do the low part, I'll do the high part


Easiest way to get the new scarecrow to the porch? On my shoulder of course.

A good excuse

Well, it's been a while but I've got a pretty good excuse. The sprinkler system is in, it appears to work, the dirt has been spread and the sod is on top. The bank account is a bit lighter (as are we after sweating through August) but the end result is definitely worth it.

It was hot and dry all of August (not a drop of rain fell). Then once we got the dirt delivered rain showed up in the forecast. Must have been God's way of saying hurry up and finish will ya, I can't hold back this water forever. So after a minor setback in early September (though the rain did a good job of packing the dirt into the trenches) I took a Thursday and Friday off of work and we worked our tails off for 4 days to get it done.



And here's a few other miscellaneous pictures from the month

This banana is as big as I am, but that's ok, it's yummy



"King of the dirt pile". That would be 15-18 yards of "sandy-loam" waiting to be spread throughout the yard.



Sometimes it's just easier to drink it



When taking pictures of her walking, you've gotta be quick on the trigger



Take 2

She can walk

Emily showed us this afternoon that she can walk on her own. She walked back and forth between us for about 30 minutes or so.

Here's a movie we took of it: walking

And we've found the tool required to dig in our yard. It's awesome!!!

May the digging begin

It's official, we're putting in a sprinkler system and sodding the yard.

So, last week we had One-Call come out and show us where all the buried stuff is (who knew we had a phone cable running along the entire south side of our lot. We've got an 8-inch water main running down the middle of the front yard (right where I wanted to put a pipe, that has been moved on the plan. And the gas company isn't exactly sure where our gas line is (their measurements and reality are about 6 feet off - we'll dig carefully).

So once that was done we marked where all of our lines were going to go. Then we found all the places where our lines crossed the buried stuff. For that we're required to hand dig whenever we're within 18 inches of the marked location. Now, for those who haven't dug in Arkansas soil lately, it's basically rock glued together with hard clay, with a scattering of smaller rocks for flavor. It's a blast.

We had Eli break out the big dig, it was cute. Unfortunately the big dig was no match for the rock/clay mix of our yard. It required the use of a pick.


Alicia demonstrates her pick skills. She's quite handy.


We're digging to a depth of 12-inches. Which is just about knee level for Eli. He enjoys measuring the trenches for us.



And of course Emily even got in on the action. She's good at collecting the rocks we extract. We're going to have to bring in a load of dirt just to fill in the trenches.


In the middle of all of this the AT&T repair guy showed up to fix our phone. We've had an awful buzz and crackling in the line for the past week. Turns out our line was corroded at the pedestal, he fixed that it's is better than it's been in months. Eli decided to check out what he was doing.

Long time

Yikes, it's been too long since I've blogged. I had every intention to blog each day while at the beach but well, I had to hold my mouth just right (or travel to the coffee shop in town) to get a Wifi signal so I decided to just skip it for a week.

I uploaded all of my beach pictures to the photo album yesterday. Head over to http://photos.thebyrdnest.net/Beach for the pictures. I'll get every one else's pictures uploaded later today. I'm not sure why the album's not letting me rotate the pictures. I'll be upgrading to a newer version of the album software later in the week, perhaps that will fix things.

Next up is to burn some CDs for folks.

Dancin' Baby

Some of you will remember the dancing baby screensaver from a few years back. Emily did her best imitation of it today. She was playing with tinker toys while Eli was listening to one of his CDs. She was laughing, giggling, and dancing along. Here's a clip, enjoy.

Dancin' Emily

Don't forget to turn on the sound

Wow, she's one!

It's amazing how fast a year can slip by. One year ago today we went from a 3 person family to a 4 person family.

We had a birthday party this evening. Emily's cake was in the form of bubbles. Some background is probably in order. Emily has taken a liking to bubbles being blown. Any time we get close to the garage she starts pointing that way and saying "bubbles". It's actually a pretty decent rendition of bubbles. So, we took all her loves in life and put them together. Alicia made a strawberry cake in the form of a bottle of bubble stuff with some bubbles around it.

She tried to buy a strawberry cake mix but they all used artificial flavors and such. So, she being the creative cook she is, just purchased a plain white cake mix. How do you make it strawberry? 1st you make a trip to Cabot (about 45 minutes) to pick strawberries. Next you manage to keep Emily from eating them all. Then you freeze a batch of them, upon thawing they are rather juicy. So you drain the juice and use it for the water the cake wants. Then you stir in the remaining strawberries. Voila, strawberry cake.

Below are a month's worth of pictures, enjoy and be patient as they load.

Here's a picture of the final result.


Emily wasn't so sure about her cake, but she warmed up to it.










Then she decided that she'd try her bib


And finally moved to strawberries


Emily enjoying one of her favorite passtimes. Circling the loop with her walker. She also like pushing Eli's scooter, even if he's on it.






The best way to eat strawberries. Straight out of the trunk from the field




We took the kids to the zoo. Emily rode an elephant and Eli rode a lion. Alicia got a good picture of one of the two eagles they have.






Eli helped me unload a trailer full of wood (not a great activity for a 90+ degree and humid day). OK, perhaps help is overdoing it a bit. He supervised a bunch and played with the wood in the trailer.


He also helped haul some wood from a limb I cut off.


Playing with bubbles. If you look close you can tell she's blowing


Playing patty-cake

Spoon? I don't need no stinking spoon

We thought we'd try and see if Emily would feed herself ravioli.


And the answer is?




She loves it.

Strawberries

Well, apparently blogger doesn't auto rotate pictures anymore, it was a nice feature while it lasted.


Anyway, today was the annual trek to the strawberry patch in Cabot. Alicia and Eli went while Sam and Emily stayed home. They came home with lots of yummy strawberries. Of course we had to let Emily try them. Let's just say, she loves them.

After dinner Emily gave Eli a ride.