Ben & Brandon

We all went to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese this past weekend. Brandon's friend Ben turned 4! Brandon had a great time all around.

Brandon's friend Kaleb was there too along with his new baby brother, Kade.

Laedyn & Kade will be classmates. This works out well since we like to have playdates with Kaleb already. I hope Laedyn & Kade are great friends as well.

Brandon preferred the rides over the games. He'd get part way into a game and say he was done. He never got tired of the rides though.

It's been raining quite a bit the last few days. Before going to bed the other night I decided to take a couple of after dark rain pictures just because it was raining so incredibly hard. Unfortunately the heavy rain has shown that all the efforts to fix the leaky roof have not succeeded. I guess we'll have to call the roofer. How much does a new roof cost anyway???

Here are two pictures of Laedyn and a picture of Brandon when he was about 3 months old. How much do you think they look alike? Leave me a comment & let me know!

I tried a new recipe tonight.
Don't the fresh veggies look wonderful?

It was a great success - we all liked it. It looked pretty impressive when I took it out of the oven & unsealed the aluminum foil...Lots of steam and good smells

Some of you will be shocked to hear that we're eating dinner before 7pm 90% of the time now so we can eat with Brandon. I'm also trying to step out of the tried & true comfort food cooking & add some healthy new items to our menu.
Brandon was a huge fan of the pesto sauce on the spaghetti. He even had seconds...We're also cutting back on the carbs for my sake, so this recipe came from an ATKINS best recipes book. Here's the recipe for any of you who might want to try it too.

Orange Roughy & Vegetable Pesto with Pasta:

1/2 C pesto
1 T lemon juice

1 T olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

orange roughy (the recipe says 4 6oz pieces - I just got what I thought was enough for dinner. It also called for Red Snapper, but the store didn't have that. The butcher said orange roughy would be comparable so that's what I used.)

12 asparagus spears, cut in 2" pcs (I used an entire bundle)

2 sm yellow squash thinly sliced on the diagonal

4 green onions thinly sliced (I used an entire bundle)

1 red bell pepper cut into thin strips

Pine Nuts (I bought a tiny little bag in the baking section & only used about half of it. Next time I'll dump the whole bag in)

1.) Heat oven to 425

2) Mix pesto, olive oil, lemon juice & salt. Reserve about 2T.

3) Toss vegetable in remaining pesto mixture.

4) Lay a large piece of aluminum foil on a baking sheet. Dump all the veggies onto it.

5) Place fish on top of vegetables & coat with remaining pesto mixture.

6) sprinkle pine nuts over the fish - liberally.

7) Take another piece of aluminum foil and cover the fish & veggies - crimp it together with the bottom piece of foil so you have a sealed packet.

8) Bake for 25 minutes

I bought a 10oz jar of pesto at Kroger, so I had alot left. I made some spaghetti and used the rest of the jar on the spaghetti.

Laedyn is so serious. She ABSOLUTELY refuses to smile for the camera. I only got the camera out this afternoon to get a smile picture because she was giving wonderful smile just minutes before. I think I'm going to have to get some assistance in order to get a smile shot - she's got a great one believe it or not...Stubborn child.

Brandon's coloring is improving daily. I'm glad he's starting to like to do it. I wondered if he ever would!

Here's my first foray into Photoshop Elements.
I took a boring, kind of icky picture, of our dining room light fixture and cropped it.
Then I turned it and stared applying different special effects to it.
First I changed the hue & saturation.



The other 3 effects are "palette knife" "liquify" and "plastic wrap." Liquify reminded Nick of a Dali painting - all I need to do is add some liquified watches & we'd be all set...


I think the plastic wrap effect looks like really shiny linoleum flooring.
Kinda neat!

Brandon had a wet weekend splashing in his slip & slide. He enjoyed pretending his it was a bowling alley and a boat racing lane.

Meanwhile the rest of tried to stay cool in the shade, although I did take advantage of the slip & slide to take some of my scavenger hunt pictures for flickr.com. Brandon wasn't happy when I wouldn't let him play with the glass bottles I was putting in the water. I was happy with the way the pictures turned out though! It made him slightly more happy when I was taking pictures of his sandal in the water. At least he could play with that, although it made getting a Brandon-free picture more difficult for me.

We spent a bunch of time in the yard this weekend. Laedyn started with a hat, but it was pretty warm & she wasn't happy with it on for long. It was cute while it lasted!

Now that I'm not taking classes any more, I never get to see any of my law school friends. Saturday night, I went out for Mexican with Andrea and Lorielle. It was nice to have a girls night out. We went to On The Border, and between the 3 of us, had every flavor of margarita on the menu I think. I liked the watermelon, but the peach was good too.

This Weeks Poll!

Check out all the scavenger hunt pictures I took this week & vote for your favorite shot.

My top 3 are:
1) four bottles 2) cereal 3) black object on black background
























You can find all of the pictures I took for the scavenger hunt posted at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/the_world_through_my_eyes/discuss/72157601666460085/#comment72157601661776370
I'm entry #6 - enveehaze.

The complete list of items was:
1. 4(!) bottles 2. Razor 3. Your favorite cup/mug 4. Horn 5. Tower 6. Anchor 7. Black object on a black background 8. Cereal 9. Sandal 10. Depict an old saying 11. Chandelier 12. Cage

If you think one of the others rates higher, vote "other" & let me know what you think!

I PASSED the bar exam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For proof, go to:
http://courts.state.ar.us/

This week's scavenger hunt is looking for a tower. When I asked Brandon to build me one out of blocks, he was more than happy to help. Throughout the photoshoot, I never touched a single block. Brandon must have rebuilt that tower about 50 times. What a sport!

I wanted to see if I could get a good falling tower action shot that would work. Brandon obliged by kicking the tower, crawling into the tower head first and trying to knock it over with his tractor.
I ended up using the one where he's about to kick it over for the scavenger hunt. I like the sense of motion it conveys.Brandon's variation on a tower...

We made pizza at home the other night. Nick put his on Boboli while Brandon & I used the rest of a loaf of bakery bread we'd used the night before for garlic toast. Brandon, of course, wanted to do his all by himself. He also wanted to be the "cheese man." He did a great job!

By the way - sauce in a box? Not so great. And neither was the turkey pepperoni... They certainly look tasty, but not at the top of the tasty charts this time.

Romeo is so pathetic. Since Mom left and there's not so much attention, he's reduced to getting petted by Laedyn. He was happy as could be & she didn't seem to mind.