I Call Her Gorgeous!

My friend came over to take pictures of Louisa this morning. She did a most fabulous job.

Transition-Texas Style

"Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible."

We're already three weeks into the school year. Henry and Elsa are doing well. I bet I could even go so far as saying they enjoy it.

I was excited to hear that they still say the pledge of allegiance every morning. And, surprised that after that, they say the pledge of Texas. Then the pledge to Hickey Elementary. Then a moment of silence. I think they need it after all of those commitments!

Hermine makes us green!

Hurricane Hermine was downgraded to a tropical storm. But she is still hitting us hard! Our backyard looks like the Everglades, and our pool is green!

The pool service was scheduled to come out today, but I think they'll just wait until Hermine stops weeping her green tears and moves on.

Greg is a champion!

Greg did his first triathlon on Labor Day. It was fun to watch him. Henry was a fantastic cheerleader, yelling things like, "You're a man! A man, I tell you!" and "Keep swimming! Don't let your fear drag behind you!"

First Day of Preschool!

Today was Ansel's first day of preschool. He was so excited to go, we couldn't get out of the house fast enough. Here he is with his teacher.

A couple days ago, he started to insist that he wasn't going to go and he wasn't going to like it. But when we went to orientation, he started enthusiastically whispering, "Mom, it's great! It's great, Mom!"

We Love Ice Cream

Uninvited guest

Our home teachers gave us a hummingbird feeder last week. The kids love seeing the birds come and go outside our kitchen window. Sunday afternoon, however, we had a different animal at the feeder. I'm still not sure how it got there.

Henry's Sunday morning

Focus!

Ansel knows we need to focus when we visit The Home Depot.

And Elsa needs to focus on not burping so much.

Christmas in August

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thanks so much for buying me this new thing with all the colors. It's got all these other colorful things hanging off it, which are totally cool. Have you tried putting them in your mouth? It's kind of hard, but totally worth the effort. Seriously, this colorful thing rocks. You must have dropped a couple grand on this, right? Thanks for this awesome colorful thing with all the things hanging off it!

Love,

Louisa

We need to get back to REI

We haven't been back to REI for several weeks. I think it's about time we returned.

Ansel quote

Ansel has a pair of fleece-lined boots that he loves to wear, even though they make his feet smellier than most human beings can bear. Here's an exchange from this past weekend when Greg saw him putting on those boots...

GREG: Ansel, you can't wear those boots.

ANSEL: Why?

GREG: Because it's hot outside. And they'll make you stink to high heaven.

(Pause.)

ANSEL: And then I will see Jesus?

First Day of School

Henry and Elsa begin school today. Getting them off this morning went off without a hitch. Probably because they weren't concerned about having to speak French this year.

This will be the first full day of school for both of them. In Switzerland, they would go to class from 8am to 11:30, then home for lunch (and sometime the Wii) for two hours, then back to school from 1:30 to 4:30. Fingers crossed that they don't start jonesing for the Wii in the middle of the afternoon.

The Xeriscaping Chronicles, Part 1

We really love our backyard.

But we learned about a month too late that our sprinkler system (which is set to go on at 4:00 am) doesn't extend to the terraced level. And now all of the grass is dead. Totally, burnt-to-a-Kentucky-Fried-Crisp dead.

Part of the terraced level was already xeriscaped. So last week we thought Why not xeriscape the entire area? We'd save on watering, mowing, and it would look a lot prettier.

We always thought that people who made rock gardens out of their yard were a little extreme - unless you live in the middle of the Mojave and only want gila monsters crawling through the yard. We didn't want to shovel a bunch of porous lava rocks around some cacti.

But we looked at some xeriscaped yards and realized they could be very colorful. So we're starting Project Xeriscape. We're trying to figure out which plants work best in North Central Texas, which drink the least amount of water, and which are the most colorful.

Stay tuned.

Russian Art

Greg's mom Chris came a week ago to visit and to help us hang all the art in our house.

She also sent us two of her Russian paintings by Nikolai Terpsikhorov, which we absolutely love.

They're hard to see, but the one below has two goats in it. (White one to the left. Black one to the right.) Chris has two goats of her own, which she named Minnie and Myrtie Belle, after her grandmothers. I'm not sure how you say either of those names in Russian. Or in goat.

Terpsikhorov lived in Moscow in the early 1900's. He painted a lot of portraits in Russia and Uzbekistan, but we really love his landscapes.

High Antiquing

Yesterday, a family in the neighborhood had a garage sale. I picked up a secretary desk for Henry's room, and this stackable bookshelf with glass doors.

I think the guy who sold it to me was high. Not totally stoned, but he was very mellow, and when strung together, not all the words coming out of his mouth made sense. And after I paid $20 for this bookcase and found similar items on eBay and craigslist going for $500 and $600, I've decided to be more pro-active in seeking out more cannabis-sponsored antique garage sales.

I'm baaaaack!

Flies and Spiders

We have these blue bottle flies that get stuck in our pool fence and die.

I don't know if they don't see the fence and get caught mid-flight, or if they're crawling around and decide to climb through the openings. But every day, we've got to flick four or five of these stupid flies out.

Dear spiders, come to our backyard and eat these flies. This fence is basically a pre-spun web. Then you can quit spinning your dumb invisible webs across my jogging path.

Last Day of Summer Vacation

Henry and Elsa start school on Monday. Henry's making sure he spends his last morning of summer vacation appropriately.

More iElsa

Elsa grabbed Greg's iPhone in the car. We're in talks with Disney Channel and Nick Jr. for her to have her own show.