Brownville, a bit late.

On Saturday, July 11, my dad's band Full Measure played a riverboat gig on the Spirit of Brownville to 81 ticketholders. Tickets sold for $10. They are a classic rock cover band, and that band is one of the reasons that we have the kids here at our house so much. But anyway. Once we got to Brownville, we didn't know where to go next. We wound our way up a crazy hill, past a super-redneck-looking shanty of a house...and found ourselves at an intersection facing not one, but two red Festivas.

We asked this guy for directions. You can't see the little yippy dog that was occupying the passenger seat. It was at that point that we knew that everything would be all right.

There's Ben and Orion looking peaceful on the boat, watching the Missouri River waves.

My dad's band. He is goofy. And barefoot.

Little sister Claire and brother Anthony, reverting to their natural state... :)

Orion tried his first ice-popsicle.

Our banana masterpieces. Stolen from the floating hotel's kitchen, and returned, in better fashion.

We stopped for a bit of R&R the next day at the Antiquarium before heading back to L-Town. Ben and I purchased, among other things, a National Geographic magazine from the year 1913.

This picture was taken on the way home...at an intersection, I looked to my right and saw this hanging in a shop window. What do you read at first glance? Support our troops...a bit of irony there.

et cetera, et cetera, blah-blah-blah.

Neither Torrin nor Mira have been doing well today. Mira's first meltdown came this morning. She didn't want Cheerios in her squares (Mini-wheats). She refused to eat them, so Mommy refused to put the sparkly sequin purple bow in her hair that she so badly wanted. Then, after visiting Torrin's classroom at school for a reading event, she vanished. We walked around the whole school (fairly big), didn't find her...we were in the office describing her when a woman brought her in. She'd gone out to the playground, alone. "But Mama, I didn't go in the street!" she protested...and wailed profusely as her pancake got thrown away. She also missed out on May Day basket's after the stories in Torrin's classroom because of her earlier unruliness.

Torrin was at school goofing off, refusing to follow directions. So I had to go pick him up from the Principal's office, all 7.92 years of sobbing mess Torrin. He filed a stack of folders for me. The task initially seemed insurmountable, but by the end he was doing all right, not asking for help alphabetizing anymore.

The Festiva Project plods along. I don't often see undocumented Festivas these days, and I only have about 35 total. But there's not many things that ruin my day in the way that missing a new Festiva does. Worse, when I miss more than one in one day. I've only captured one Festiva outside our city, although I missed one driving on the Interstate. Chalk that up to a phone call while driving (I know, naughty).

2 weeks, no post.

what's up, what's down, what's all around?

I don't know. This baby of mine, though, is 3.5 months old and he has gotten altogether too big already. Growing like a weed, a tall, skinny weed. With fab baby chubba-cheeks.

It's still tax season, so a sliver of my scarceness can be attributed to that, along with the chiseled-off-portion that has managed to get to the YMCA a handful of times for some much needed, much wanted decompress-destress chill 'n workout time. We still have a housefull much of the time also, although the 13-year-old sister has been preferring to stay elsewhere. Somehow PGG, Poppyseed, my mother and I weaseled our way out of the house leaving 4 bigger kids (Mira, 3; Sophia, 5; Torrin, 7; and Anthony, 9 under the charge of a friend of mine while we went to an art showing deal and other assorted festivities.

Speaking of things Festive-ish, I've missed two good Festiva opportunities this past week. One was white with a gray swoosh and a big delivery-dude-type-sign attached to the car with a sizable metal pole; the other was white and just waiting for me to snap its picture in traffic but I had forgotten my memory card at work. *sigh* And I'm still kicking myself over missing Santa Claus (or rather, a large white-bearded guy) traveling in the opposite direction in a Blue Festiva. So far, we have 32 individual photographed Festivas. More to come on those later.

bikin' bear baby

Orion loved his first bicycle ride.
For those observant folks out there...there's a Festiva in the background. That one is #9 in the Official Festiva Project; 27 total Festivas have been documented to date.

This should be easy.

I was tagged by Julie to do a blog of 7 Weird Things About Myself.

Okay, easy enough. I think. I've been considered generally "weird" for most of my life.

1. I'm afraid of nail clippers. I hack 'em off with nail scissors or even regular scissors. This goes for my kids too.

2. I love chocolate and I love ice cream but I do not care for chocolate ice cream.

3. My parents are both adopted. I'm not.

4. I don't use salt. I don't even have normal salt in my house, although I do have some sea salt which was purchased for tie-dying purposes.

5. I don't own a mop. I have never mopped my kitchen floor since we moved to our house in May 2006. The flooring is laminate and I love it. I spray it with Windex.

6. I am currently in love with the smell of Windex. I look for excuses to clean things so that I can smell the wonderful lemon Windex smell.

7. Just recently I started a photo adventure titled "The Festiva Project." This is my first public mention of it; the only persons who knew about it before now were my kids and PGG. I'm taking pictures of Ford Festivas, which are little egg-shaped vehicles produced between 1988 - 1993. I've been caught in the act three times now (and I only have 16 total). I'll probably end up making a website for it, or its own blog. Below is the most recently captured picture. A red one, modified hood, back end covered with stickers, dents abound.

Now, I'm supposed to tag 7 people, but I honestly don't know that I know of any bloggers who haven't been tagged that read my blog...will think on that one and edit the post later perhaps.