Outtake

So I'm (finally) editing some photos from the Pirates' birthday. A disturbing number of shots are variations on this:

Mama's little chaos monkeys!

Now we are two

Today we pretended the Pirates were safari explorers and took them to the zoo for their birthday:

That's Will posing cutely in the back, and Dash waving a stick around in the front.

It's hard to believe my little guys are two years old!

Two tomorrow

This is officially the last day that the Pirates are one year old.

Guess which son is the daredevil in the family? I swear I spend half my time yelling, "Chairs are for sitting!"

We're heading to the zoo for their second birthday tomorrow - just the four of us checking out a whole lot of animals, which I'm stupidly excited about.

Dash's patented "Bitch, please" face.

Everyone says that you won't believe how fast your children grow up - that it seems like only yesterday they were tiny newborn babies - and this is often true.

Gotta love that baby vampire look that canines give toothy little kids.

On the other hand, when half your photos look like this, sometimes you kinda hope the days pass even faster.

Why yes, I DID just sit there and take a photo while they tried to kill each other. Mother of the Year, right here.

It's a good thing they're cute, eh?

New glasses

I was trying for sexy librarian chic.

Hopefully I didn't stall out at geeky bookworm wannabe.

Big Mama

The Pirates' favorite word at the moment is "big". Everything is big, whether it really is or not.

Big airplane.

Big tractor.

Big pillow.

Big banana.

Big toothbrush.

Big ant.

Big Mama.

Thanks a lot, kids.

A few things

Have you seen this birthday calendar for fictional characters? Ernie (of Sesame Street fame) and I share a birthday. This is AWESOME.

Repeat after me: I do not need a $248 quilt. Even though it would look awesome in our new bedroom. But still. Do not need.

Have you seen this time-lapse composite of the views in Rear Window? Super cool.

It says a lot about my nerdy tendencies that I would totally use this glass half pint milk carton. I mean come on - how cool is that?! (Also-but-not-quite-as-cool: this sundial ring. Who needs modern technology when you have the mighty power of the sun! Also-also: what did we do before thinkgeek?)

How I Spent My Easter Vacation

One word: moving.

After seven months in The Shoebox, we finally moved to a much better (and significantly larger) house in a nicer part of town. Goodbye, horrible little hovel with a freakish number of spiders! Farewell, kitchen with no wall cupboards! Adios, hideous carpet with Bonus Mystery Stains! Sayonara, lack of heating and air conditioning! Auf wiedersehen, bedroom closets with doors that stuck so badly we had to remove them! Au revoir, backyard with seven million generations of dead bindi weeds!

The good thing about moving over Easter is that you have a nice long weekend to get everything done. The bad thing is that everyone you know leaves town, which means that you pack the kids off to their grandparents, and then spend two days shifting the contents of an entire house with just two people. Thankfully, our marriage (and our backs) survived and now we're 99% unpacked and have interwebs again.

Photos to come!

Ten

As of today, I've been in Australia for ten years.

Ten. YEARS!

Over those years, I met and married him:

My favorite photo of us at our wedding, largely because we look so dorky. In art as in life, eh?

And got this:

My awesomeness was too much for just one country to contain.

And survived four of these:

I think I'm getting PTSD just looking at this.

And saw lots of these:

I'm getting twitchy just looking at this. No lie. Effer was HUGE.

And had them:

Who wouldn't love Pirates in an ice cooler?

And ate lots of these:

The s'more, I mean. Not the fingers. This is Australia, not a Donner Party reunion.

And saw them:

By far the highlight of my year. Apparently I'm easily pleased by kitsch.

I can't help but wonder if there are another ten years of Elvises in my future. Bring it on, Australia!

No time for a real post

Three assignments due and we're packing our stuff to move into a new (much better, yay!) house over Easter. However, I would be remiss if I didn't pass on this little gem of the interwebs: Cat Scientists of the 1960s

You're welcome.