Valentine's Day

Boy!  Life in the LOE sure is boring.  All we do is sit sit sit sit.  Sit while waiting for the next holiday in our groovy child-sized foam furniture.

Ah yes!  Valentine's Day is next!  It started with pancakes shaped appropriately.

Look!  SM got a couple, too.

Linus was right!  The St. Valentine's Holiday Muskrat visited!  Look he/she left stuff for each of us on the couch!  (We couldn't tell if it was Muskrat Suzie or Muskrat Sam)

Check out my spankin' new outfit.  It's every important color in the world!

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope the muskrat visited you, too!

"Oh, man! Hey, we should just... go to Australia."

Everyone knows "That's not far enough." when you've blown up Walker's wedding tuxes with a mis- kicked grenade! 
Poor Chuck Norris - he is getting old, and a newer version of his TV show has hit the airwaves.  It is low budget, so they used the same theme song, but included the soothing voice of my dad - listen closely near the end!

 
With such untalented singing - my dad better get to Australia before Chuck hears it!  Of course, that's not far enough.

Dedicated to Grandma L.

Happy Birthday SM! Part II - The Presents

The Cake Experience left me messy and in need of a bath.  The wash left me feeling clean and ready to open presents.  Especially when the presents are in the shape of my age!

At first, I didn't quite get it. 

Then I got it with JC's help!

Woo-hoo!  I got musical cards...

New clothes...

What was in the big box?

A new chair that's just my size.  Thank you for all the presents!

Happy Birthday SM Part I - The Cake!

Oh my!  SM is a year older, which means our faithful readers are also a year older, too!  Everyone is aging, but, somehow, SM does it so gracefully!  Perhaps it's the crown as the same effect has been noted for Queen Elizabeth II.

 My vacuous dad often falls asleep while my beautiful momma watches hours of the Food Network.  It looks like he picked something up subconsciously to fill all the unused space in his head - a talent for cakes.  Look at his awesome creation:

My hand is outstretched and sampling the frosting.  I received the letter "S".  Learning the alphabet is fun, no?

 Happiness, thy name is devil's food cake!

I may be a baby, but I know "The Sing-off" talent when I hear it.  Nick Lachey, are you listening?  And Drew Lachey, do you see my dad's moves?

Tomorrow, I will detail the presents that were received.

Trinidad y Tobago

Maintaining my dad's New Year's Resolution....February's tropical vacation bridged the last few days of January and the first two days of February.  We took the whole family to Trinidad and Tobago (but mostly Trinidad).  Here is a picture of our beach-front hotel...

At night we could look out on the moon-lit waves!  Instead of getting usual souveniers to remember our trip, I, M, was able to choose an exotic pet.  I chose the guppy as it was first discovered in Trinidad in 1866 by Robert John Lechmere Guppy.  They had a museum which described his shipwreck in New Zealand that caused him to live with the Maoris for two years.  Boy! Life sure was boring back then!  My guppies (my brother JC picked the other one) made the trip home and I named them Cookie and Chocolate...

Here's a close-up view of them...

The blue one was named Cookie and the red one was named Chocolate.  I used 'was' because guppies are tropical fish.  My beautiful, but chintzy, momma keeps our house at 68 degrees - far too cold.  With great sadness, our guppies lasted one day and three days.  I would rather you never bring them up in my or my brother's presence unless you want to see hysterical crying.  My sister, SM, was much smarter in her selection of an exotic pet.  She chose a glow-worm that the museum imported from its native New Zealand for the RJLG exhibit.  Here is a video of her playing with it...

Next month:  Belize!

Power Smoothies

Despite the near-constant sunshine and delightful temperatures of the LOE, my beautiful momma still needs an occasional pick-me-up.  Enter the Dragon.  In this case, the dragon is not a ninja named Bruce Lee, but rather a ninja named Ninja.  I'm pretty sure if he were alive we would be calling this contraption the Bruce Lee and a man-kitchen would contain only a Bruce Lee and a George Foreman.  Flipping through recipe book, my beautiful momma happened upon a POWer smoothie.  Emphasis on the POW.  Here she is trying it...

Nice!  With the POWer flowing through her body she decided SM needed the pick-me-up, too.  The effect wasn't immediate despite SM's low body weight...

But then it hit...

She actually climbed the whole staircase later that night.

Isle of Enchantment

Ah!  My dad made a New Year's resolution to take my beautiful momma on a tropical vacation at least once a month.  January is Puerto Rico - the Isla of Enchantmento.  The travel was so that my dad could give the world's greatest talk on thermal stability of.. blah blah blah.  We explored the El Yunque rainforest.  Look how high we were!  The air was almost too thick to breathe!  CAUTION:  This post includes no pictures of children, cute or otherwise!

Here is La Coca Falls...

Our resort also had a great pool with friendly iguanas...

But the pool did not compare to the beach....

This was our view for the week when we abstained from further talks on plasticity....

We had a wonderful trip.  Thanks to Grandma L for holding down the fort!  Next month is Trinidad and Tobago.