So I haven't updated this week for various reasons...


1. The cable STILL only works for an hour or so a day. They said they might get to me on Monday to attempt to thing about starting to consider fixing it. I don't know what their hurry is. It's only been malfunctioning for 6 weeks.


2. I did nothing interesting this week


3. I've been wasting my little bit of precious working internet time on facebook . Apparently, as I was warned, it sucks you in and you can't quit.


At Karen's urging I signed up and spent hours perusing list of friends and their friends and their friends' friends. It doesn't end. Some really hilarious stuff out there, though.



Here's Alex being cute with one of the chicks.
We're enjoying the gorgeous fall-like weather and have no plans for the weekend! Well, except for a calculated trip to Dollar Tree to spend a gift card that Julia got for her birthday. Big Plans.

The kids went with the Aucoin's to a new RV campground in central LA, this weekend. I drove out to meet them on Sunday. We discovered this train which the kids just HAD to sit in. I'm not sure why we don't own one of these, yet, but we do have plenty of plastic barrells (which these were made of) so it's only a matter of time. Wouldn't it look lovely behind the golf cart?! I'm making the kids squint into the sun in this picture (Julia refused to get into a train car).
They were most fascinated with the sugar cane fields which surrounded the park. (Sugarcane is one of LA's chief agricultural products) so we had to take a walk to pick some cane to taste.

Aaron isn't in this picture because he was busy freaking out about the ants

and standing water that were required to reach the cane field. He did, however, enjoy tasting the sugarcane once we picked it!

Here's the whole RV rig. Granny and Paw-paw do it right when they go camping! Heck, this site even had cable TV. The turtle got to go camping and he had fun, too. He is now living in a big bowl with some fish friends (well, he's eating them!).

Then we headed back home...through the swamp (which smelled like dead fish thanks to the hurricanes) and over the bridge.

Dave had a fishing trip, on Sunday, and actually came home with some flounder, sheepshead, and red fish. We grilled fish last night and I found a recipe that involves lump crabmean, bacon, and flounder so that's the plan for the night!

Our cable/internet works every day from 11 am until about 2 pm. I have to plan ahead to post stuff which is easy if I'm at home but rather difficult if I'm out in the middle of the day.

Ooh, I got a letter saying our "stimulus rebate" is in the mail!

How cute is this? As best we can tell it is a tiny little snapping turtle. He's on Julia's hand in this picture so you can tell how small he is. He's living in a tub the kids set up with rocks, water, and plants. "Little Buddy" caught it in a pond, yesterday.

We enjoyed a gorgeous day with almost fall-like weather. We assaulted the persimmon tree to see if the persimmons were ripe. We found enough for the kids to fight over.

The parish child psychologist called me again, today, because he was really fascinated by Julia and wanted to direct me to a bunch of websites that he had in his notes from a sensory class he took. Apparently he is very into "sensory" kids so she piqued his interest. He seems to be very excited to have come across an actual "sensory" child in his daily travels!

Alex has a black eye. I'll have to take a picture for you, tomorrow. He fell on the coffee table. He keeps poking the bruise and saying "right here" and "table". This also requires several band-aids.

No Magnificent Frigatebirds, this week. I guess they went home. Just chickens, ducks, cats (one of which went to work today with Dave in his trailer), dogs, fish, turtles, snakes, etc.

The cable doesn't work very often. We were having this problem before the hurricane and they pretty much told us we were at the end of the list for repair. But, at least it's working right now.

Here are some new kid/chicken pictures. The kids were having fun with the chickens perching on them. One of their favorite pasttimes is to find a bug and throw it in the chicken cage and watch them all fight over it.

Here's the afghan I just finished. It ended up being about 6 feet X 4 feet. Much larger than planned. It's amazing what you can accomplish in the carpool line!

And here's a picture of Alex because I haven't put one up of him. He is now *mostly* "officially" potty-trained! He progressed rapidly from being house-broken to potty-trained. What a lovely thought...no more diapers! He's also growing 2-yr molars and very very very cranky.

The project for the day is to finish hanging bead-board up under our back porch. It's half done. Now we just have to finish it. It will be lovely when finished!
We dug up the big ugly caterpillar chrysalis. It is big and black. I'll post a picture next time.
And one other exciting event....we saw a group of Magnificent Frigatebirds soaring over Livingston. It was on Friday when it was really really windy from Hurricane Ike in the gulf. I guess they got blown up from the Gulf. Pretty cool that I got to mark "Magnificent Frigatebird" in by bird book (does that make me a dork?)!

Drumroll, please...

WE HAVE CABLE!! I saw a cable guy standing by a mass of destroyed cable, this morning, but apparently he works quickly!

Here's a pic of the tree

And two men wielding brand new chainsaws...we may end up living in a field. Trees fear them.

Julia had a nice birthday. She is supposed to have a party, this weekend, with friends. Her aunt Angela created this lovely horse complete with saddle, bridle, and blanket. The horse was formerly named Fred but I believe has been renamed Dancer. And here she is getting sung to by her Great Aunt Donna...

I had a meeting with the school board folks, today, about Julia's gifted testing. In summary they said she was probably the strangest child they'd ever encountered but that she, indeed, qualified to be in the gifted program (I took that as a compliment coming from a child psychologist who I figured had seen it all;) ). Yay! I think she will get a lot out of it.

Oh, I almost forgot. I received a lovely package from Anne containing this...

A pair of hand-knitted socks that fit perfectly!

They are lovely. What a craft bunch of fiber-artists we have!

I'm still having internet woes. I stopped by a coffee shop and managed to get my whole page made and many pictures loaded but then I lost my connection. Now I'm trying from a friend's computer but it still doesn't have enough signal to upload pictures. Hopefully cable will return soon!
The kids went back to school, today, after an extra week off. They were less than pleased as you can imagine! It is nice to return to some sort of normalcy, though.
Dave will be quite busy in the coming months with stump grinding. Good time to buy a stump grinder, eh?
I'll try on the pics later.

What not to do in a hurricane: tie all the toys to a tree because the tree may, indeed, fall down. I did think about this possibility while doing the tying but I did it anyway. Luckily, only one toy was crushed to death.

Well, I can't seem to post pictures at the moment so I'll try later. I also had a butterfly pose beautifully for me.
There was rumor, this evening, that the power would be back on soon. Everyone stood outside in anticipation for awhile but then eventually gave up and wandered back in. We dined on hot dogs with hamburger buns (hotdog buns are not to be found at the moment along with dairy products, produce, frozen foods, canned goods, etc). I did venture out to Target and it was lovely to get back into the world. Then I took Alex to Bass Pro Shops where he terrorized the boats and ATV's and then moved on to the hats and sunglasses. They fear us. We should be banned.
Julia and Aaron are in Texas visiting their aunts and soaking up some A/C. Tomorrow is Julia's birthday! We will meet half-way to pick up the kids, tomorrow. No word if school will really start Monday or not.