Pretty In Pink

Hello Everyone!

Little girl got a haircut!



Personally I like the shoes.

Daddy

It's a Bird! It's a Plane!

It's Super Kitty!!!

We still fight with R2 daily on his climbing on our counters. Today, he almost had to find a new home.

Ronnie turned from the counter to the sink. There was a blur from the corner of his eye. R2 had jumped across the bar, snagged a piece of bacon from the counter and dove under the kitchen table. All within a matter of seconds. Ronnie followed him under the table to reclaim his bacon. R2 spent some quality time outside after that.

Dude, stay away from the bacon.

Boiled Cookies

These are my favorite cookies of all time. I will gladly give up white chocolate chip macadamia cookies for these any day. People will look at you weird if you tell them they're eating boiled cookies. You know, that look you gave your computer screen when you read the title. You'll get that one. You could call them chocolate oatmeal cookies if you want. But, that isn't what Granny called them.

Boiled cookies are easy, even for the kitchen challenged. They may not set right if you make them on a day with 100% humidity though.

Ingredients:
1 stick butter
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup Cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1 t. vanilla
2 1/2 cups oatmeal

Put everything except the oatmeal in a pot. Bring to a roaring boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in oatmeal. Drop by the spoonful onto wax paper. Once they're cool enjoy!

Tips:
Use real butter. I've found that using no-salt butter will cause them to harden even in 90% humidity. The Walmart brand works just fine.
For cocoa we have a can of Hershey's. It works great.
Use real oatmeal, not instant. Again, we bought the big tub of Walmart oatmeal. Hey, it'll only be used for these cookies.
We harden ours on our steel table in the kitchen. This causes them to harden almost instantly. No waiting for them to cool.

Finally, hide them from the kids. These things rock. If you share them now you'll be sharing them forever.

May the fork be with you...

Tomorrow. Every child gets attached to certain objects. And every parent says words they never thought they would. I have added to my collection of Things I Never Thought I Would Say. Tonight I uttered the words "No, Paige, you can't take the fork to bed with you. You can have it back in the morning." A 10 minute melt down followed.

Here's the fork:

It looks innocent enough, right? I thought so too. Paige has played with this fork for 2 days now. She's fed Daddy, Mommy, Aunt Wii, her babies. She stabbed Ryan with it on accident. (It was the blunt in and she tripped while holding it.) This fork has been in her Dora backpack, her play kitchen, and on the dinner table. I don't know why the sudden attachment to the fork. Aunt Wii gave it to us when Paige started on solids. It's an old set of Ryan's. I think it may have even been Jeff's. (Wow. Jeff's 20. Old fork, huh?) We have the matching spoon. Wonder how long till she gets attached to that.

Last night Paige gave it up no problem. Tonight? I had to pry it from her hands. The entire time I was hearing "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" in the back of my mind. She screamed. She gave night night kisses while screaming and begging for her fork. She even tried to drink a cup of milk while screaming for it. Finally, we convinced her. The fork is safely on the counter. Paige is finally asleep.

Of course, I could hear Aunt Wii, Unc & Ryan laughing down the hall as Daddy & I tried to calm her down. Thanks guys. And thank you to Ryan for the title.

That's just wrong

My friend Kim lives in North Carolina. Her husband, Ken, is stationed in Louisiana. Yeah it sucks and he gets home to NC as often as he can. He flew from the New Orleans airport last week to go home for the long weekend. He was scheduled to fly back in Monday evening. Of course the airport was closed for Gustav. He flew back in today, the first day the airport was open. Ken got his truck and drove to the exit. He was shocked when he got to the toll booth. Can you believe the New Orleans airport charged him parking for the days he was closed? That's just wrong.

Let Loose The Dogs Of War!!

Hello, It's Ronnie!

Yep, my turn to say a few words about the ongoing struggle of parents and children.

If you have been keeping up with Angie, you all know that I'm a out of work bum. So instead of going out to find a job, I have been lounging around the house in my smoking jacket eating Bon Bons. Actually I'm taking a week off, since I only had two days off during the month of August, I deiced to take some time to spend with Paige. I am trying to come up with different things to do, not just sit around the house. Today we are going to Municipal Park to see the old trains. But, yesterday was special. Yesterday, Paige and I went to visit the U.S.S. Alabama battleship park.


Here she is on the deck of the ship. We went inside and some parts she was cool with, but others she was kinda afraid of. I held her a lot while inside. When we got to the galley, she ran around looking at all the models of the old ships.

There is also a plane museum for aircraft. She went through this twice. "Daddy, take picture of me and plane!" So as you would imagine, I did.

The, "That's my plane!" pose.


There is also an old WWII Submarine, The U.S.S. Drum, we went thou that, again she was kinda scared through about half of the ship. The bridge kinda freaked he out though. Paige kept waving and saying hello to a group of elderly who were on a group tour of the park. One of them was nice enough to offer to take a pic of us in the sub. In case you were wondering, yes the hat I am wearing is from the U.S.S. Enterprise CVN-65 and on it is a Command pin from Star Trek, SciFi Daddy.

After the Sub we went back to see the planes, then Paige wanted to go back to the boat. This time we went up. All the way to the bridge of the ship, thank goodness for timer settings on cameras. The she wanted to eat lunch, the she said it was time for a nap. So we went back down and left the boat. Not before we went and saw he planes again.

For being such a good sport, I stopped by McD's to get some french fries. If you know anything about us, that was a huge treat. (I don't believe in fast food, something about being able to that myself or something) All in all, we had a very good day. I'm still trying to think of something extra special for Friday. Maybe the Zoo:)

For those of you who don't know about our ship,

http://www.ussalabama.com/

Take a look.

Thanks for reading.

Ronnie Tony Elvis

Updates

Gustav
Major disappointment. We barely got any wind & rain! I was looking forward to at least some storm. Don't get me wrong, we got a little. But, it was more like an afternoon rain storm than a hurricane. We're down to just a bit of drizzle and a little wind now. Of course our power flickered this morning when it was mostly done.

Potty Training
Complete failure yesterday afternoon. She peed in her big girl panties more than in the potty. I decided to go back to diapers and try again soon. It's not a complete give up though. Daycare does work with her and is trying to potty train her there as well. Let's see if they do better than we did.